


Fretting Over the Fate of Dinosaurs

by harper_m



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-29
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-25 01:33:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harper_m/pseuds/harper_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma finds herself serving as magic methadone for a Queen formerly known as Evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something that was kind of nice and sweet, for a change. Also, something chock full of fandom clichés, because I quite like this fandom's clichés. This is pretty AU post the breaking of the curse.

“So, uh, here I am.”

She’d wondered if it was a coded message, some kind of plea for help from an endangered Archie, but Regina didn’t look like she was threatening harm. In fact, she was sitting so stiffly the only thing in danger was probably the structural integrity of her spine.

“Is there some kind of emergency? You did send me a text, right?”

Archie gave her a nervous smile and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I did. I’m so happy you could join us, Emma.”

“Join you? Archie, you sent me a text that said ‘Please come ASAP! It’s about Regina!’ I wasn’t really thinking this was a social call.”

The flare of Regina’s nostrils was the only thing that reassured Emma that she hadn’t been turned into a statue, unless she’d just imagined it. That happened in fairy tales, right? Maybe Regina was petrified and that was the emergency? Or was that Harry Potter? God, she was so not prepared for de-statueifying someone.

“Right. About that…” Another nervous smile and a gesture she interpreted as an invitation to come in, close the door, and sit. “Regina and I…” A sharp glare from Regina, and he was clearing his throat delicately, and good, not a statue. “I suggested to Regina that you might be able to assist us with a tiny obstacle we’ve encountered in her counseling.” The glare sharpened. “Uh, talking sessions. In the work she’s doing to put certain aspects of her past firmly behind her.”

Emma glanced at Regina warily. “Like AA? You want to make amends or something?”

Regina’s jaw tightened so that she was wearing an expression of tightly leashed fury that, if not really reassuring, was at least familiar enough for Emma to start to feel like she’d be able to get a handle on the situation if she just stuck around long enough. “Not exactly.”

“But not completely not exactly,” Archie interjected gently. “Maybe I could explain.”

He seemed to be waiting for a signal from Regina. It came in the form of the smallest nod of the head Emma had ever seen, but was apparently enough for Archie to continue.

“As you know, when the curse broke, magic entered this land. Regina promised Henry she wouldn’t use hers, but it’s been difficult to keep that promise.”

Emma’s eyes cut sharply in Regina’s direction, the weight of her service weapon suddenly heavy against her hip. “I see,” she said slowly, picturing all the ways this could go wrong when she brought out the cuffs. “So, what? Is this some kind of confession? Are you turning yourself in?”

“This is ridiculous,” Regina huffed, turning sharply in her chair so that she was facing away from the room’s other two occupants. “I did warn you.”

Archie rushed to reassure Emma. “Nothing like that. I promise.” He paused, clearly considering his words carefully. “With the return of magic, Regina now has access to it in a way she hasn’t for the past 28 years. It’s awakened certain desires in her.”

Emma snorted, unable to help herself. Regina shot her a venomous glare, enough to make Emma think she was on the verge of indulging that particular desire at that very moment.

“So I should keep a closer eye on her? Is that what you’re saying? In case she gives in to her, you know, desires.”

“Not exactly.” Archie removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and Emma had to wonder how often he had to take a moment to reset himself in his sessions with Regina. If she had to guess, she saw premature wrinkles in his future. “Regina told me that her magic didn’t work in this world. At least, not at first.”

“Yeah.” Emma shrugged one shoulder. “Then I touched her and it, I don’t know, jump started it.”

“Right.” Archie nodded encouragingly. “Regina mentioned to me that you possess a very pure magic.”

For some reason, Emma felt like blushing. “I guess it’s good or whatever. I don’t know. It’s not like I know how to use it anyway.”

She felt Regina’s eyes on her, and was surprised to see her expression wasn’t, for once, disapproving.

“Maybe you could use it.” Archie was smiling at her encouragingly, and Emma began to wonder if she’d blundered her way into some kind of trap. Her hackles raised, she looked between the two of them, trying to suss out whatever devious plan it was with which Regina had forced Archie into assisting her. “Regina shared with me that your magic had a very calming effect on her.”

“And?” Emma’s voice had gone into a higher register. Maybe one of them was really Cora. Maybe Cora was pretending to be Archie and she was about one second away from magical annihilation. She should have told Mulan where she was going. It was just this kind of lack of foresight that always, always got her into trouble where Regina was concerned.

“And I was hoping,” Regina said, enunciating each word sharply, “that you would consent to working with me to re-establish my hold on my desire to use my magic.”

Archie nodded and smiled encouragingly, and Emma wished they’d just get to it, whatever it was.

“How, exactly, am I supposed to do that?”

“I have a theory that your magic can help Regina quell her need to use her own.”

His encouraging smile didn't exactly do anything to dissipate the anxiety that had started to spike through Emma. She licked her lips and turned to Regina. “Are you going to try to suck my magic out of me? Are you going to kill me?”

She wasn’t sure if she could trust anything about the situation, but Emma would have sworn that Regina looked genuinely surprised. “Kill you? No, Miss Swan. Where would you get…?”

“She just needs to touch you.”

They were both looking at her reassuringly, but nothing about what they’d just combined to say seemed at all reassuring. “Touch me? Like stick her hand in my chest and rip out my heart kind of touch me?”

Archie looked stricken. “No. Of course not. I was thinking more along the lines of holding hands.”

Holding hands? Emma was gratified to see that Regina looked as disgruntled about that as she felt. “You seriously called me here because you want me to hold hands with the Evil Queen so she doesn’t go off the deep end?”

“We don’t use that name here,” Archie said. “It’s a safe space.”

“Oh my fucking god.”

Regina bristled. “I told you this would be a waste of time. You’re free to go, Miss Swan. Try to forget we ever had this discussion.”

This is just what happened to someone living in a town full of fairy tale characters, she thought bitterly. She had to deal with magic addictions, crickets who thought they were therapists, and an Evil Queen who wanted to hold her hand.

“This isn’t some kind of trick?”

Regina sneered at her. It was oddly comforting. “If this was a trick, do you honestly think that’s the kind of interrogation likely to uncover it?”

Which, fair enough. “Fine,” she said, slumping down on the couch she figured Archie usually used for his more traditionally inclined clients. One hand came up to shade her eyes, because honestly, this was ridiculous and the less of it she saw, the better. The other hand she extended like a peace offering.

“Regina?” Archie’s voice was encouraging, the school master urging a prized pupil on to a feat of great daring.

A sigh, Regina’s shadow edging closer, and suddenly there was a hand in hers. It was warm and soft and…

“Is this it?” she asked as Regina settled onto the couch beside her. “This is supposed to help?”

Archie frowned at them. “Regina?”

“Nothing. Perhaps if Miss Swan exerted a little effort.”

“Seriously?” Emma dropped the hand covering her eyes so that Regina could appreciate her glare.

Regina’s face was studiously blank and canted slightly to the left, as if her arm was an independent being. As if she could pretend that they weren’t sitting on Archie’s couch holding hands if she couldn’t actually see it happening. “I can’t exactly benefit from your magic if you aren’t using it.”

Emma thought seriously about the many ways in which she could make Regina stay silent for just a little while. Gags. More gags. Other kinds of gags. Unconsciousness. “It doesn’t exactly perform on command.”

They were sitting on the couch holding hands with Archie watching them with a hopeful, expectant expression on his face, and she felt like she’d just fessed up to some kind of sexual dysfunction that was wrecking their marriage. It was officially so mortifying she was probably going to have to find some way to make sure she didn’t have to meet Regina or Archie’s eyes for at least a solid week.

“Relax, Miss Swan,” Regina said, her voice surprisingly gentle. “Center yourself. Feel the magic and give it permission to manifest.”

Yeah. That wasn’t happening.

“Perhaps if you gave us a moment alone, Dr. Hopper.” She could almost picture Regina’s smile as she said it. It was the Mayor indicating she’d stopped playing and it was time for her to get her way, firm and the kind of fake pleasant that had, at one time, crawled up Emma’s spine just like nails on a chalkboard.

“Oh. Of course.” He was all nervous energy and anxiety, a peasant scrambling to disappear in the face of his Queen. Emma didn’t look up as the door closed, and tried not to think too hard about the fact that she was now alone with Regina and still holding hands.

“Miss Swan.” Again, Regina’s voice was disturbingly gentle. Fingers under her chin turned Emma in Regina’s direction; it was by far the most non-violent contact they’d had since Emma had been dragged to Storybrooke. “I can imagine that this is as unpleasant for you as it is for me, but Archie is convinced that it will work. Personally, I’m not convinced, but I’m willing to try. I would give anything to be able to keep my promise to Henry, but I’m not sure you understand how difficult it is. Magic is seductive and honestly, sometimes I find it difficult to remember why I need to refrain.”

Emma got that. It was going home alone when you were drunk and horny and someone hot had made it clear they were very, very willing.

“It’s not that I don’t want to help you,” she said, glancing down at their joined hands. “I’m just not exactly a master at getting my magic to do anything. At all.”

“You need to… May I?” Emma looked down to see the fingers of Regina’s free hand hovering just above her heart and tried not to panic. “I’m not looking to steal your heart, Sheriff. I promise.”

“Okay,” Emma said shakily. “Yeah, okay. Just, if you could not kill me, I would really appreciate it.”

Regina’s eyeroll was nearly palpable. “Your magic is always with you,” she said, fingertips making contact with the skin above the dip in Emma’s shirt and tracing a short path up and down her sternum. “Close your eyes, push everything else from your mind, and let yourself feel it.”

How she was supposed to do that with Regina’s fingers tracing over her skin, Emma didn’t know. Close her eyes, and the only thing her mind seemed to be able to focus on was just how soft Regina’s skin was, how she smelled absolutely delicious, and how she had gotten so close that their knees were touching. She was going boneless under that touch, and holy shit, this was about to get embarrassing.

“Focus on the way it feels inside of you.”

Jesus. Maybe even more embarrassing than before Regina had said that in that voice.

There was a moan; Emma was about 55% certain it hadn’t come from her.

“Very good, Miss Swan.”

Was she making magic? With Regina? A quick peek revealed that Regina’s eyes were closed. Her head was tilted back and her mouth open slightly, lips pursed. It was not entirely unlike how Emma imagined Regina might look in other situations where someone was talking about how good something felt inside her. Was this what magic did? Turn her into a nympho with a focus of one? Should she be feeling something?

And, oh. Oh, there it was. It was… Emma had felt this good before, but never when she was just holding someone’s hand. This was the weightless comfort of a high, the seductive pull of sleep after good sex. She could feel her heartbeat slowing and all of the day’s stress leaching free of tense muscles.

If she was Regina, she wouldn’t want to give this up either.

“Everything okay in there?”

Emma jerked up with a gasp, magic spigot drying up at Archie’s voice. “Everything’s fine,” she said, voice surprisingly hoarse. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Regina blinking heavily and licking her lips, and holy shit, just a couple of minutes of hand-holding did this?

“It’s been a half-hour,” Archie said, clearly apologetic as he stuck his head into the room. “I was beginning to get worried.”

A half-hour? Emma glanced up at the clock on the mantle, and yeah. She’d been stuck in some kind of tantric magic trance with Regina for more than just a couple of minutes.

His half nervous/half encouraging smile was back. “Did it work?”

Regina cleared her throat. “I believe so,” she said, and Emma swallowed hard. She’d never heard Regina sound that relaxed. Her voice was almost a purr minus its usual predatory timbre; instead of a heinous threat personified, it was a swarm of butterflies in her stomach. “I believe Miss Swan and I may have to work on regulating her… output, but otherwise, it was quite successful.”

She couldn’t look at either of them.

“Same time again tomorrow, Emma?” It was Hopper, and he sounded as euphoric as she felt. He was, Emma thought, undoubtedly extremely relieved that he hadn’t pitched this to Regina only to see it fail. She was working on scraping away the evil, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still utterly terrifying when she wasn’t lounging on a couch looking orgasmic.

She was getting ready to find a polite way to phrase ‘Oh hell no’ when Regina spoke, a hint of cool creeping back into her voice. “I trust you’ll be able to find the time, Sheriff. And, I hope I can trust in your discretion on the matter.”

Well, shit.

******

“Before we do this,” Emma said, eyeing the couch nervously, “I want you to explain to me exactly what it is we’re doing.”

Regina was wearing a power suit, as if this was a lunch-time meeting between the once Mayor and her Sheriff. She was straightening her cuffs, refusing the meet Emma’s eyes, and acting like they weren’t about to engage in something that felt entirely too intimate for comfort.

Archie perked up at the question. “It’s really quite fascinating,” he said. “All we’re doing is satiating Regina’s desire for magic in a way that keeps her from indulging in her own. We’re using your magic – good magic – as a substitute so that the part of her addicted to her own magic receives the sort of stimulus it needs to keep her from, well, falling off the wagon.”

Emma scowled. “So I’m like some kind of magic methadone? She scores a hit off of me and it keeps her from giving in to the urge to use?”

“Leave it to you to come up with the basest description possible,” Regina said, sneering, but with the kind of guilt in her eyes that let Emma know she was on the right track.

It was the kind of fucked up situation Lifetime would have made into a movie. They’d call it something like ‘A Mother’s Secret’ or ‘Her Cry For Help’, and they’d play up all the tear-worthy parts of their backstory. Emma would be the emotionally scarred former foster child who gave her son up for adoption while she was in juvie. Regina would be the cold, emotionally unavailable adoptive mother with a troubled, abusive relationship with her own mother – the one who had turned to drugs to help her cope and was on the verge of a breakdown. Henry would be the perceptive and precocious son who brought his two mommies together, saving them both from loneliness and despair. There would be harrowing scenes of Regina’s rehab with Emma at her side, the development of a grudging respect and friendship between the two women, and the kind of affirming ending that would leave viewers crying into their tissues. Hell, it was already a Lifetime movie, only she was living it, and it’d gone irrevocably off-book once she’d come to a town full of fairy-tale characters that no one could leave.

“Look, it’s weird. I’m pretty sure we can both agree about that,” she said, hands shoved down deep in her pockets. “I’m not saying I won’t help. Whatever you need to be a good mom for Henry.”

Regina’s shoulders relaxed in a way she wouldn’t have allowed before the curse was broken. It was another sign that she was trying, that she was chipping away at her shell and hoping that the person who emerged was better than the one before, and Emma couldn’t turn her back on that. Regina was a woman who had hit rock bottom but was determinedly pulling herself back to her feet, and Emma could respect that. Grudgingly.

“Archie, out.”

The woman knew how to clear a room. Emma could respect that too.

“Perhaps you could work on your control today, Miss Swan,” Regina said, settling down on the couch primly.

Emma joined her, her posture decidedly more comfortable. “Look, lady, if you’re not happy buying what I’m selling, maybe you should shop elsewhere.”

She was getting used to Regina’s scowls. This one didn’t even faze her in the slightest. “I’m merely suggesting that you exercise a little restraint.”

“What, is my magic a little too much for you?” Emma smirked. “Can’t handle it, Madam Mayor?”

Old Regina would have sent her flying into a wall, leaving her clawing at her throat and gasping for air. New Regina just scowled a little more deeply and grabbed her hand hard enough to bruise.

“Focus, Sheriff.”

And, yeah, maybe there was something between no magic at all and effectively catatonic, but it was only her second day. There was a learning curve, and she’d only just found it.

After, they were back to straightening their clothes and studiously ignoring one another, with Archie beaming at them like a proud father.

“Can’t we do this somewhere more private?” Emma asked, hands back in her pockets. “No offense, Archie.”

Regina’s lips pursed as she considered it. “I suppose we could relocate,” she said, fiddling uncharacteristically with a button on her silky Mayor-lady blouse. “My house, perhaps?”

Not that she didn’t feel uneasy about that too, but seriously. It had to be better than the couple’s therapy vibe she got from Archie’s office.

“Tomorrow night? After my shift ends and the kid is in bed?”

At the mention of Henry, Regina’s mouth tightened. “Call first.”

Emma wanted to ask her why, because it wasn’t as if Regina had much of a social calendar in a post-curse Storybrooke, but Regina had already taken one hit in the past minute. There was no need to pile it on.

“Yeah, sure.”

She could call.


	2. Chapter 2

Regina ushered her into the house as if they were trying to avoid surveillance.

“Did anyone see you?”

“I wasn’t exactly checking for tails.”

Regina at home was a soft cashmere sweater and tailored black pants that looked only slightly less formal than her mayoral outfits, but her hair wasn’t completely perfect and most of her lipstick had been worn away. Emma couldn’t help seeing it as an improvement. Without her heels, Emma found she had an inch on her. It was oddly reassuring.

“The study?” Regina suggested. “Would you care for a drink? I have cider.”

“Nothing for me.” She swallowed hard, unsettled by something other than the offer of cider for once. “Hey, Regina, do you think you might be able to help me with that control thing? I was thinking it might be a good idea, you know. What if we get my magic flowing and there’s no one around to shake us out of it? They’d find us a week from now, curled up on the couch with smiles on our faces just like those Artic explorers who want to take a little break to sit for a minute in the middle of a blizzard and end up frozen in the snow for 30 years.”

She was pretty sure Regina was going to laugh at her; her own expression – and she wished she could change it, she did – clearly had sheepish written all over it.

That meant it was kind of a relief when Regina just sighed and turned on her heel to stalk into the study, a clipped, curt, “Come” trailing after her.

******

“It’s a matter of moderation.” They were on the couch, tilted toward one another, and Regina was looking at her with an intensely serious expression on her face; honestly, it had probably been better when they were doing this at Archie’s, but now she was at Regina’s house and it was weirdly intimate and she was just going to have to deal with it. She was doing hero’s work here, and just because there was a fire crackling softly in the background and the whole place was so quiet that she could hear Regina breathing didn’t mean she could lose focus. “Have you ever played a musical instrument, Miss Swan?”

At Emma’s glare, Regina smiled tightly. “Sorry. Silly question.”

“I’ve played Guitar Hero a couple of times,” Emma offered, not sure why she suddenly felt inadequate. “I killed it on Legends of Rock.”

She could almost see Regina counting to 10 in her head and wondered if it was something Archie had taught her. “Let’s try an analogy more suited to your particular talents.”

There was a long moment of silence.

“Well?”

“I’m still thinking.”

Emma huffed. “I think I get the gist. Sometimes you go hard and sometimes you go soft. Like with sex, or,” she struggled for another example, “drinking.”

She was sure she could have thought of something more appropriate given time, but with the way Regina was glaring at her, she decided against it.

“And people think I’m a poor role model for our son.”

“Hey, I’m not the one in rehab here.”

If Emma had to judge by the glint in Regina’s eyes, she couldn’t say for certain how much longer Archie’s counting trick was going to work. There was probably a time when poking a caged bear became dangerous to one’s health regardless of the bars; Emma was pretty sure she was edging perilously close to that line.

She slumped back against the back of the couch, sighing loudly. “I am actually here to help,” she said, running a hand through her hair. “Maybe we can do that thing again, like you did on the first day. It helped.”

Regina looked at her oddly for a moment before seeming to recall the help Emma was referencing. For once, Emma was wearing a shirt that actually covered her all the way to the base of her throat; as Regina reached for her hesitantly, laying her hand fully against Emma’s chest, just above the top of her breast, she realized she was intensely grateful.

“Like this?” Regina asked, looking up at Emma nervously. If nothing else convinced Emma that Regina really was trying, it was the way her hand trembled where it was pressed against her.

Emma licked her lips and reached for Regina’s free hand. “Yeah, like that. And maybe you could talk me through it again.”

Up close, Regina’s eyes were nearly hypnotizing. “You have to stop thinking of your magic as something separate from you, Miss Swan,” Regina said, voice a soft rasp. “It’s like any other part of you, waiting for you to take notice of it. Your lungs work even when you’re not thinking about breathing. Your heart beats regardless of whether you command it to or not. Your magic is here,” she said, two fingers tapping against Emma’s chest, “waiting for you to notice it.”

Emma swallowed hard. She closed her eyes and followed Regina’s voice. There were her lungs, there was her heart, and there, pulsing beneath all of that, was her magic.

“Do you feel it?”

Emma nodded, eyes still closed. She was hyper-attuned to everything around her in a way far above the norm. She could feel the heat of Regina’s palm seeping through her shirt and hear the rustle of fabric as Regina leaned closer. “Yeah. I feel it.”

“Think of this as sharing your magic with me, Miss Swan. I’m not asking for all of it. Just a little.”

Just a little. Emma tried to picture it. She was a car on an on-ramp, slowly gaining speed. She was a ball rolling downhill, gathering momentum. She was Regina’s smile when she really meant it, spreading hesitantly as if she didn’t believe she’d be allowed the expression.

“How is this even my life?” she asked, her voice echoing distantly. Her free hand curled against the couch, needing to feel that she was still connected to it and not, instead, floating above it. The fire was captivating; she found she couldn’t look away. “It like I don’t live in the real world anymore.”

“There is no real world.” Regina’s voice was surprisingly malice-free. Slowly, sleepily, Emma turned her head to look at her. With her head tilted back against the cushions, eyes closed, Regina looked remarkably untroubled for once. “I’ve lived in two of them now and visited even more. If you’re looking for a world without complications, I can assure you that no such world exists. Well, not anymore.”

“It’s just, I was making it okay, you know?” The thoughts left her before she knew they were there, the secrets of a melancholy drunk spilling forth. “I had a good apartment. A good job. I was a little lonely, but everybody is these days. A year later, and…”

“A year later and my son still hates me,” Regina said, filling in where Emma had trailed off. “My therapist is a cricket. I have no job and no friends, though the latter really isn’t all that unusual.”

Maybe it had something to do with the magic flowing between them, but Emma couldn’t let things stand at that. “You have great hair,” she offered, along with a half-smile.

“That’s nice of you to say, dear, but so do you.”

Emma glanced down at their joined hands, the world moving in slow motion. “I’ve still got this turned up too high, don’t I?”

“For sharing, yes. If we were trying to combine our magical forces to defeat a horde of trolls, this would be about right.”

“How could we fight trolls like this?” Emma lifted their hands, but the motion left a trail behind it like a time lapse photo. “I feel like a stoner at Burning Man.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she heard Regina laugh. “That’s because we’re not actually releasing any of the magic. It’s cycling back and forth with no outlet. If we were using my magic, trust me, it wouldn’t feel like this.”

“What would it feel like?”

Reality returned with such sudden forcefulness that Emma sat up with a gasp. “What the hell, Regina?”

Beside her, Regina was massaging her hand as if working out an ache. “I think that’s enough for tonight, Miss Swan. Thank you for dropping by.”

Regina was closed off, a bear in a loosely locked cage she could poke if she was feeling brave enough.

“Whatever,” Emma said, pushing up with a sigh.

******

“Would you care for a cookie, Miss Swan?”

The spread on the coffee table looked like something from a cable food network, with perfectly arranged, perfectly plump and uniformly shaped cookies on a cut crystal tray. There was a story about this, she thought. A witch who lured children into her cottage and plied with them sweets. She couldn’t quite remember what happened in the end, but she was getting the hang of fairy tales now. Chances were, someone ended up dead.

“Did you bake these?”

Regina’s eyes narrowed like she was going to toss out an insult, but numbers ticked invisibly above her head and she stayed silent.

“No, I’d love one,” Emma said. She grabbed a cookie first, and at another narrowing of Regina’s eyes, snagged a napkin as well. It was white chocolate with macadamia nuts and sinfully delicious. “This is amazing,” she said, already well into her second bite.

“You can take them,” Regina said, her tone so nonchalant it was painful. “If you don’t devour them all first, perhaps you could pass a few along to Henry.”

The cookie stuck in a suddenly tight throat. Henry. Of course. Had Regina always baked like this for him? Was he the kind of kid who’d grown up in a house that smelled like cookies and always took freshly made lunches to school? He was, she knew he was, even if he never said anything when she handed him a couple of dollars each day before she dropped him off at school.

“Yeah,” she said, swallowing past the lump. “I’ll save him some.”

Tonight Regina was a pair of black slacks and a crisp, tailored black button down with enough buttons undone that Emma had to put conscious effort into avoiding looking at her cleavage. She looked entirely capable of leading Emma into temptation, and Emma shook her head. She wanted to ask Regina if this magic sharing thing was supposed to torque up her libido, but if Regina said no, Emma was pretty sure the moment would make its way onto her list of the five most awkward moments of her life.

“You want to get started?” she offered instead.

Regina nodded sharply. She stood, straightened her cuffs, and stalked over to the couch, sitting down beside Emma as primly as she had that first day.

“I’ve been thinking,” Emma said, making a face to head off Regina’s no doubt caustic retort, “and I figure what I need is some kind of magic governor.”

“A what?”

Emma shrugged. “You know, like in a car. It sets the car’s top speed. I need something to set the upper bound of my magic, at least for this.”

Regina was still staring at her skeptically.

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Emma said, trying not to sound as frustrated as she felt. “Maybe if you showed me what it’s supposed to be like, it would help. If you used your magic and showed me what it’s supposed to feel like, I might be able to figure out how to get this right.”

“Use my magic?” Regina’s voice was a cross between stunned and furious. “You want me to use my magic, Miss Swan? What is the purpose of this arrangement if not to do the very opposite of that? I’m trying to overcome my need to use my magic, and you ask me to indulge in it? I realize you’re far from a trained professional, but surely even common sense would tell you that using my magic is a supremely bad idea.”

“I’m not asking you to go on a week-long bender,” Emma said defensively, “but I’d like some instruction.”

“You want to feel my magic?” The air quickened around them. Emma’s hair stood on end, goosebumps rising on her flesh, and how the hell had this even happened? A minute ago, Regina had been offering her cookies, and now the bear was firmly out of the cage. “You’d like a demonstration?”

“I think you need to take a minute, Regina,” Emma said, trying not to tense. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“No,” Regina said, and it was all Evil Queen. Her voice was smoke and oil, her smile venomous. “You asked because you wanted to know, did you not?”

So this was how she was going to die, Emma thought. Magicked to death by the Evil Queen of fairy tales.

Regina twined their fingers together, both of Emma’s hands held tight in hers, and why hadn’t Emma brought her gun? Why had she thought this was safe?

“Very well, Miss Swan,” Regina said, eyes flashing purple.

Regina’s magic was fire singing through her. It was heat and darkness and seductive promises, just shy of painful. Emma felt like she could curl up in it, like there was pleasure untold to be had if only she’d let go of herself and let it take over, and fuck, she wanted to let go so very badly.

“Do you see, Miss Swan?” Regina asked, chest heaving. Purple still swirled in her eyes, but the world had returned. Emma reeled, dizzy from it. She clutched at Regina’s hands for support and felt the keening loss of her magic. Just one taste, and already she was craving more.

“Holy shit, Regina,” she said, staggering forward. Regina caught her with a noise of surprise, and gave another when Emma wrapped her arms tightly around her. “You’re trying to walk away from that?”

Regina stayed stiff in her embrace and after a moment, Emma backed away sheepishly.

“You should go,” Regina said, expression still thunderous with rage.

Emma felt guilt settle heavily on her shoulders. “No. Come on. We’ve haven’t done our thing.”

“Miss Swan…”

“Let me help you.”

Regina closed the gap between them with two angry steps. “Help me? I think you’ve helped enough for the night. I want you out of my house.”

“Regina…”

“Out,” Regina growled, and this time, Emma didn’t argue.

******

So, she’d screwed that up pretty royally. Regina was probably in the middle of the most destructive lost weekend ever and it was all her fault, if Archie’s “Pls help!” text was anything to go by. Tires screeched against pavement as the cruiser lurched to a stop in front of Archie’s office; Emma was through the front door before the car stopped rocking.

“I’m here,” she said breathlessly, bursting through the door and into Archie’s session. She expected devastation, or perhaps Archie pinned to the ceiling or transformed back into a cricket. What she didn’t expect was to see Archie in his chair, notebook in hand, and Regina sitting quietly and primly on the couch.

“Miss Swan,” Regina said sourly, hands clenching together in her lap, “what are you doing here?”

Sagging against the doorframe, unaccountably glad that she wasn’t going to have to magically duel her son’s mother, Emma sighed. “Archie asked me to come.”

“Oh,” Archie said, smiling nervously, “right.”

“Archie, seriously? There’s a way to text someone when something is actually an emergency, and there’s a way to ask someone to drop by without giving them a panic attack.” She glanced over to where Regina was still sitting stiffly and glaring at her. “Nobody’s bleeding, nobody’s chained to the wall, and nobody’s dressed all in black leather. That makes this not an emergency.”

“Feel free to return to the Sheriff’s office,” Regina said, shifting so that her feet were crossed neatly at the ankle and folded under the couch. “I certainly didn’t request your presence.”

“Regina tells me she’s had a relapse,” Archie broke in, voice surprisingly strong.

“Oh, yeah,” Emma said, grimacing. “That’s all on me. Totally my fault.”

“And as I was saying to Dr. Hopper before you so rudely interrupted, I feel it will be best if I move forward alone.”

“What? Regina, no,” Emma said, straightening. She crossed her arms across her chest and tilted her chin defiantly, hip still resting against the door frame. “I messed up, okay. I want to help.”

Regina’s lip curled, anger in her eyes in a way Emma hadn’t seen since she’d taken a chainsaw to an apple tree. “Well, maybe I don’t want your help any longer.”

“Well, maybe this isn’t about you.”

“Excuse me?” Regina stood and stalked over to Emma, forefinger outstretched. “I’m the one who…”

“Maybe it’s about Henry,” Emma said, ignoring Regina’s fury. “Maybe it’s about making sure he gets his Mom back.”

She watched as Regina deflated in front of her before straightening, shoulders tense and jaw set. “Don’t,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare act as if I’ll ever be granted the privilege of having Henry returned to me.”

Emma shrugged. “I’m not making any promises. I wouldn’t do that to you, but you don’t stop loving someone just because they turn out to not be perfect. Henry still loves you, even if he’s not ready to admit it right now, and one day, maybe soon, he’s going to want you back in his life. If you want that too, you have to make sure you have the kind of life he can be a part of.”

For a moment, Emma was halfway convinced that Regina was going to punch her again.

“If you want to help,” she said finally, giving Emma an impressive sneer, “then help. Try not to make things worse.”

In they were in their Lifetime movie, this would be where the music would swell.

“Perhaps,” Archie interjected, a discordant note in their scene, “you might want to return to the office for a few joint sessions.”

Emma glared at him. “Not in this lifetime, pal.” Then, to Regina, “You, I’ll see tonight. Have the cookies boxed and ready.”

******

That night, Regina was in something tight and black that, on Emma, would be called a tank top. On Regina, she didn’t know what it was, because it was clearly made of some kind of expensive fabric and probably tailored so that it fit her like a second skin. Again, the slacks were black, and Emma wondered if maybe she should have a talk with Regina about not dressing the part of evil. If she did, Regina might stop wearing things like that, though, and frankly, Emma was not especially in that camp. When did the Evil Queen get time to put in resistance work, she wondered? There was definition there, and that little line of muscle cutting down across her bicep was the kind of thing that only came with a serious amount of expended effort.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said, not even waiting until Regina had the door fully open. She held out a bottle of wine in a way that was probably too aggressive given that she was apologizing. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

The look Regina gave her was a mixture of disgust and so over it, like what had happened wasn’t a big enough deal for Archie to send her an SOS text less than half a day earlier. “Sheriff,” she said, ignoring the apology, the bottle of wine, and almost Emma herself as she turned abruptly on her heel and headed for her study.

Emma sighed and followed her.

“I’m opening this,” she called out as she headed into the kitchen, disturbed to realize she knew Regina well enough to guess where she kept her corkscrew on the first try.

Regina was waiting for her on the couch, looking distinctly discomfited. “You want a glass?” Emma asked, holding up a pair of empty wine glasses she’d pulled from a cabinet. “Ruby tells me I’ve missed the Spanish wine revolution or whatever, but I figure better late than never.”

She could almost see Regina’s cutting retort fighting to get free, barely held back behind gritted teeth. “Very well,” she said instead, though the tone was still sharp. “I see you’ve decided to make yourself at home.”

“Well, yeah.” She filled each glass just shy of the brim, not especially concerned with appropriate serving sizes. “I figure I’m in it for the long haul, right? We’ll be doing whatever this is for a while. The kind of heat you’re packing isn’t the kind of thing you just get over. I work all day, Regina. I need to relax, and since the time I usually spend kicked back with a beer is time that I spend with you now, you’re going to have to learn to relax with me.”

Regina accepted her glass stiffly.

“Or, you could come to me.”

Wine sloshed onto black pants, invisible against the dark fabric.

“Very funny, Sheriff,” Regina said, voice tight. “I’m sure the Charming household would simply love to host me.”

Emma took a long drink of wine while Regina wiped ineffectually at her lap. “I’m thinking Henry and I need to find our own place soon,” she said, leaning forward to deposit her now only half-full glass. “Maybe by the time we do, you’ll be in a good enough place to come spend some time with us. Besides, while we’re living with the folks, I can trust them to look after him while I’m gone. When it’s just the two of us, I’m not going to want to leave him by himself. You have some time to think about it.”

A longing like hunger reflected in Regina’s eyes; when it dissipated, the expression left behind was empty.

“Shall we get on with things?” she asked, extending her hand.

Emma shrugged and took it.

On-ramp, she thought. Ball rolling down a hill. Regina’s smile, a real one.

“Still a little too much,” she said, feeling as if every hair on her body was standing on end as the magic began to flow.

“A little,” Regina replied, her voice seeming to echo. “Much better, though.”

“Yeah, better,” Emma repeated. The concept of time was lost to her, as was the concept of personal boundaries. She was vaguely aware that she’d shifted closer, that she was leaning against Regina’s arm with her head on Regina’s shoulder, but she didn’t know how long she’d been there. “What do you sleep in?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was just wondering,” Emma said. “It’s something I do.”

“Wonder what I sleep in?”

“Yeah. Well, not just you. It’s kind of like a hobby, you know. Trying to match up people’s personalities with what kind of pajamas they might wear.”

“And what kind of pajamas do you think I’d wear?”

Emma ran the fingers of her free hand over her thigh, quite sure that the fabric of her jeans was perhaps the softest thing she’d ever felt.

“Something black and silky with little straps,” she said, gesturing vaguely at her own shoulder. “Probably falls about mid-thigh. Classy but sexy. Maybe has a little robe to go with it.”

“Oh.”

“Do you have the cookies? For Henry?”

“I do,” Regina said, sounding flustered. 

“He’s going to be thrilled. Hey, how long has it been?” Emma tried to focus on the clock on the mantle, but the numbers wouldn’t let themselves be seen.

“Long enough.”

Emma snapped back into awareness to find herself practically draped across Regina, who had both hands clenched tightly in her lap.

“Uh, sorry,” she said, straightening. She ran her hand through her hair and scrubbed at her face, focusing resolutely on the floor until her blush faded. “This magic thing, you know.”

“Indeed,” Regina said, back ramrod straight. “The cookies are in the kitchen. You can leave the wine.”


	3. Chapter 3

“I know I’m late,” Emma said, pushing through the door as soon as Regina opened it. She unzipped and toed out of her boots, leaving them beside the coat rack, and hung her jacket from a rung. She was aware that in the two weeks since she’d been coming by Regina’s for their own special version of rehab, she’d been thoroughly trained, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “There was a fight at the bar. Don’t even get me started. Somebody owed somebody some sheep? I don’t know.”

Regina had her arms crossed across her chest, staring at her. She was a pair of jeans, so crisp Emma wondered if they’d ever been worn before, and a white button-up that looked as if it had been professionally dry cleaned. “And does that account for your eye?”

Emma grimaced. “Does it look bad? I took an elbow.”

“You’re bleeding.”

She brought a hand up to see, only to wince as soon as her fingertips came into contact with inflamed skin. “Crap.”

“Come with me,” Regina said, already on her way… not to the study. Instead, Emma followed her up the stairs and down the hallway into a bathroom she knew must have been Henry’s if the motorized Hulk toothbrush still sitting in a matching Hulk cup was any indication. Emma sat on the closed lid of the toilet as Regina sifted through the contents of the medicine cabinet. “Henry was always getting himself into scrapes,” she continued absently, reaching back to pull a washcloth from the linen cabinet. She ran it under cold water for a moment before squeezing out the excess. “I should have bought stock in the company that makes band-aids.”

It was disconcerting to see Regina hovering over her, eyes narrowed in concentration as she dabbed lightly at Emma’s eye. Emma tried not to jerk away from her touch, the wound tender, and froze when Regina put a hand on her chin to steady her.

“I can’t really do anything about the swelling. We’ll get some ice, but I don’t know how much that will help. It’s a small cut, fortunately.” Regina’s fingers were cool against her skin, her touch light. A moment later, Emma was sporting a small Hulk band-aid on the corner of her eye, and Regina stood back to survey her work thoughtfully. “It’s possible you could heal it yourself.”

“I could what?” Emma asked, voice hoarse.

“With your magic.” Regina gathered up the band-aid wrapper and tossed it in the trash. “For someone with magic as pure as yours, healing should come naturally.”

Emma stood to look at the damage in the mirror. The eye was going to be black, all right. “Yeah, well, it doesn’t.”

“I doubt you’ve ever tried with anything approaching real effort.”

“It can heal on its own.”

“I suppose it will have to. I’m certainly not going to break my promise for something so minor.” Regina smoothed down the front of her shirt in a gesture Emma would have called self-conscious on anyone else. “I baked a cherry pie. Would you like a piece?”

“Of course.” Although, her pants had been a bit harder to button that morning. Damn Regina and her delicious baked goods. “Maybe a small one.”

It no longer felt as odd to sit on a stool in Regina’s kitchen while Regina bustled about in a way that was oddly soothing. She placed a piece of pie in front of Emma, no smaller than normal, and a cup of freshly brewed coffee. She filled a plastic baggie with crushed ice and wrapped it in a kitchen towel for Emma’s eye, then busied herself with wiping away a few stray droplets of water.

“Sit,” Emma said, wanting to reach out and force Regina to relax. “Have a piece of pie with me.”

Regina deigned to sit, but she didn’t eat. In the past, this might have made Emma nervous. Now, it only made her sad.

“What do you think about me bringing Henry with me some time?” she asked, licking the back of her fork. “We could have dinner. He could play video games while we, you know, did our thing.”

She wasn’t sure if Regina looked horrified or angry.

“He doesn’t know what we’re doing,” she rushed to reassure Regina. “We could tell him we have some adult things to discuss.”

“Because his natural lack of curiosity keeps him away from things we wouldn’t want him involved in,” Regina snapped.

Emma lowered the fork to her plate with a clink. “Is this freaking you out?”

“Why? Don’t I appear calm to you?”

Emma shook her head at the heavy sarcasm in Regina’s voice. “We don’t have to. I just thought you might want to see him at your house instead of at short, supervised visits at Granny’s.”

“So instead you thought you’d propose a supervised visit here? And you propose to combine it with our…” Regina’s face twisted as she tried to come up with a satisfactory way to characterize their interactions. 

“With your rehab?

Before they’d spent a couple of weeks holding hands every night, Regina’s glare might actually have frightened her a little.

She speared the last bite of pie and pushed the plate away with a groan. “You’re going to have to stop baking. Seriously. I’ve gained five pounds. Tomorrow night, we go jogging before we get down to business. I mean it. I know you work out.”

“Aren’t you afraid people will see?” Regina snarled. “It might ruin your reputation, Savior.”

Emma wasn’t always the quickest on the draw when it came to interpreting feelings, but she could tell she’d definitely put Regina’s on edge. She put her elbows on the counter and propped her chin in her hands, sighing. “Should I wait a little longer to make sure this isn’t a trick or should I maybe start moving on trying to fix this family? It’s up to you, Regina. You’re the one who spends all her time up in this creepy mansion all alone. You could keep doing that, or you could maybe have Henry and me over for dinner.”

From the way her jaw was clenching and unclenching, Emma figured that Regina had moved beyond counting to ten to a much more advanced anger management technique.

“Did you even think to ask Henry if he was interested in coming here?”

“He’s eleven, Regina,” Emma said, pushing away from the counter. “If I tell him we’re having dinner here, then we’re having dinner here. Besides, he misses you.”

“You can’t know that.”

“Sure I can. I live with him.”

“Trust me, I’m well aware.”

Used to the contact now, Emma grabbed Regina’s hand and tugged her in the direction of the kitchen table. “How about I ask him, then,” she said, watching as Regina settled primly into a chair. “If he says yes, it’s a go.” She tightened her grip on Regina’s hand and closed her eyes. The magic started to flow, almost routine now.

“If he says yes,” Regina agreed, voice stern in a way that was more about fear than reluctance. Emma wondered at how things had changed, that she’d now know the difference.

******

Emma looked Regina over from head to toe, taking in the return to black slacks. “I wasn’t kidding about the jogging,” she said, “so unless those are your workout pants, I suggest you go change.”

Regina stiffened. “I don’t believe I ever agreed to go jogging.”

“Come on. You’ve got to be tired of doing Pilates videos in your living room.”

Perhaps it was a trick of the lighting, Emma thought, because otherwise, she would have sworn that Regina had blushed.

“I suppose you’re set on this course of action?” she asked, frowning.

Emma pulled at the hem of her ratty old MIT tee-shirt, a long ago wardrobe addition that had been the best thing to come out of that short-lived relationship. “Yep. Pretty much so.”

In a perverse way, one of the things she’d come to appreciate most about Regina was watching her struggle with actually admitting she wanted to do something she would otherwise never admit to want to doing. Jogging, maybe. Jogging because Emma Swan had suggested it? She’d probably rather cut out her own tongue than say yes.

“Very well,” she said finally, somehow managing to make it sound as if she was granting Emma a favor. “I’ll change.”

When Regina reappeared, Emma allowed that of course it only made sense that she’d be wearing something color coded, top of the line, and skin tight. She probably jogged in outfits that cost more than Emma’s entire wardrobe put together.

It made sense too, she decided ten minutes later, that Regina would look like she’d learned how to jog by reading 30 years of Runner’s World magazines. If there was ever a need for professional stunt joggers, Regina could probably easily transition into a second career.

“I talked to Henry,” Emma said, trying not to sound as if she was beginning to get winded.

Regina pulled two steps ahead of her. “And?” she asked, voice hard.

“And he’s down with it.”

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

“It means he wants to come for dinner,” Emma said, drawing even with Regina.

In any other town in the world, Emma would have worried about jogging down a lonely country road with only the moon for visibility. In Storybrooke, they weren’t likely to find themselves in the way of a passing motorist. It was both oddly freeing and oddly isolating.

For several long minutes, their footsteps and the local wildlife were the only sounds breaking the stillness. “This weekend,” Regina said finally. “Saturday.”

By the time they returned to the mansion nearly an hour later, Emma was drenched in sweat. She accepted a bottle of water from Regina, downed half of it, and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Ready?” she asked.

Regina raised a brow. “You can’t be serious.”

Sweaty, on Regina Mills, was definitely a good look.

“What?”

“You’re not sitting on any of my furniture like that. It can wait until after we’ve showered.”

Emma gaped at her. “Showered? And then what? I put my sweaty clothes back on?”

Sweaty and sneering was possibly even better. “I can see this was poorly planned as usual.”

“Come on, Regina. Let’s just do it here, on the porch.”

“Oh, brilliant idea, Sheriff. Let’s sit on my front porch holding hands and hope you can keep your magic in check.”

At that, Emma blushed. It’d been more than a week since she’d last gotten even close to putting them in a magical coma.

“The back porch, then.”

She’d forgotten, of course, about the de-limbed apple tree when she’d made the suggestion. Looking at it now, she felt a pang of regret.

“Sorry about that,” she mumbled, slumping back against Regina’s outdoor loveseat.

“Yes,” Regina said, voice soft and wistful. “Isn’t it most often the case, though, that our anger finds the targets that don’t deserve it?”

Not willing to allow the thoughts Regina’s words pulled to mind, Emma nodded her head and tightened her grip around Regina’s hand.

“I do have a guest bath, you know,” Regina said, perhaps minutes later. Emma still wasn’t able to grasp the passage of time, not when they were caught up in the magic together. “If you’d care to do this again.”

“You mean jog?”

It was a textbook opening for a sarcastic little strike, and Emma tensed, waiting. The night was so perfect – stars flung wide across the expansive stretch of sky visible above the treetops, the soft night breeze, the familiar ache of well-used muscles, the way Regina’s fingers were twined with her own, the now muted flow of her magic – and so whatever the retort would be, she knew it would sting a little deeper than usual.

To her surprise, Regina only sighed. “It was nice to be away from all of this,” she said, her free hand gesturing back at the mansion. “I have a tendency to end up in large, empty dwellings with only myself for company. The books of this world would have us believe it’s somehow romantic, but really it’s mostly...”

“Lonely?” Emma offered. “I was pretty lonely myself, before I came here. Trust me, a condo can be just as empty as a mansion.”

“I suppose it’s a fair punishment,” Regina said, chin tilted away from Emma. “I took your life away and you took my son away.”

It was so much easier to avoid these kinds of discussions than to have them, and Emma was conscious enough of her preferences to know she’d rather engage in the former. “I didn’t take him away,” she said, shifting restlessly. “You were already losing him before I even entered the picture.” When Regina moved to pull her hand free, Emma held on tight. “The main difference is, I can’t have a perfect fairy tale childhood. That’s gone. But Henry? You can win him back.”

“Part of him, if that,” Regina said tightly.

“Yeah, part of him. He’s in my life now and I’m not letting go.” She didn’t realize she was rubbing her thumb against the back of Regina’s hand until Regina turned sharply to face her. “That doesn’t mean one of us has to be the winner and one of us has to be the loser. You aren’t a perfect mother, but there are a whole lot of mothers who are a whole lot worse. You love him. You’ve always taken care of him. Most of the time, you put his needs first. If you aren’t in his life, you’re not the only one who’ll suffer for it. The best thing for Henry is to have a life full of people who love him and want the best for him, and you’re one of the most important of those people.”

In the moonlight, unshed tears shone in Regina’s eyes.

Emma looked away, granting her a measure of privacy. “It’s getting cold,” she said a moment later, gently untangling their hands. “I should go.”

She left Regina sitting on the back porch, staring out at the night sky.

******

At the very least, the food was good. She’d tried, initially, to break the silence, but each conversational gambit had dropped with the awkward weight of a boulder. It was easier to focus on the food, suffer through the clink of silverware against china, and ignore the massive, building tension.

“Really delicious,” she said for the third time, shoving in another forkful.

Regina and Henry were mirror images, with their stiff spines and masks of indifference. Masks that cracked when they thought no one was observing them, each sneaking glances filled with the same kind of longing at one another. It was both heartbreaking and incredibly frustrating, and if she hadn’t been dealing with an 11 year old boy with massive trust issues and a formerly Evil Queen with some of the same, Emma would have tried a more direct approach to reconciliation. As it was, she was loath to do anything that would threaten the peaceful, if tense, atmosphere.

“There’s dessert,” Regina said, when their plates were empty and Emma’s cheeks were starting to ache from the smile she’d been forcing since they’d knocked on Regina’s door.

Emma stood so quickly she nearly knocked her chair to the ground. “I’ll get it,” she said, already scooping up Regina’s dishes.

“Miss Swan…”

“No, you cooked. Sit. Rest.”

As she backed her way into the kitchen, two sets of eyes turned her way, both equally stricken.

She’d been in Regina’s kitchen enough times to know where everything was located, which came as a shock once she realized that she was moving without hesitation. Dishes were rinsed and slotted into the dishwasher, and new, clean ones were pulled from the cabinet. Silverware followed, and after she spooned scoops of strawberry cobbler into shallow bowls, she instinctively turned to pull ice cream out of the freezer.

She wondered if there was danger in this kind of familiarity.

When she stepped back into the dining room, it was to see that the configuration of the room’s occupants had changed. Regina was sitting by Henry, her hand outstretched to cover his, her expression gentle and skittish. Henry was smiling back at her – small, for now – and allowing the contact without fidgeting. Emma wanted to turn back around and make herself scarce, unwilling to disturb the progress being made, but when those two sets of eyes found her again, she saw hints of relief in both. Maybe it was best to take this slow, she figured. Maybe walls as high as the ones that had been built between Regina and Henry were going to take some time to chip away.

“Look what your mom made, kid,” she said, depositing Henry’s bowl with a flourish.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the briefest of smiles flit across Regina’s lips.

“That went well,” she said later, fingers entwined with Regina’s. Henry was taking advantage of the access to his Xbox and Emma was trying not to flinch at every noise that might indicate that he was soon to burst unexpectedly into the study to find them holding hands. “Dinner was amazing.”

Regina nodded slightly, accepting her just due. “I have missed spending time with my son,” she allowed stiffly.

Emma thought about how she’d feel if someone took Henry away from her, if they only allowed supervised visits and then only rarely. It was a bit galling to realize that she probably wouldn’t be able to handle the situation with as much grace as an Evil Queen.

“We should do it again.”

Regina’s fingers tightened.

“So,” Emma said, trying to lighten the suddenly serious turn the tension between them had taken, “when will you be ready to cook for us again?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Regina’s jaw clench. “Miss Swan, I would feed you every day if it meant Henry would be in my house, at my table, again.”

It was the kind of blunt honesty she couldn’t joke her way out of, and so she sighed, the concession taking on the air of inevitability. “What do you say we start with the weekends and Wednesdays?”

For a long moment, Regina was perfectly still. “If you make this promise to me and break it…” She trailed off. Tired, maybe, of making threats.

“You have to stop expecting the worst of everyone,” Emma said, shoulders slumping with sudden exhaustion. “I get why you do, I really do, but not everyone is out to screw you over, you know. You’re Henry’s mom, and it’ll be nothing but good for him if the two of you manage to fix your relationship.”

She could see the questions Regina was holding back in the way her brow tightened and her eyes flashed with confusion and uncertainty. It helped, seeing Regina be a normal person, seeing her be a woman with a fucked up life she was trying to fix and confronting some of the same kinds of problems everyone else had. Communication, clearly, chief among them.

“After everything,” she began slowly, so tense that she looked as if the slightest of touches could break her. “After all…”

“Maybe I’m just tired of it all,” Emma said, saving them both the trouble. She leaned back against the couch, running her free hand through her hair. “Don’t you get tired of it? All of the history and grudges and hatred? It’s not helping anyone. It’s definitely not helping me. You did some shitty things, a lot of them to me, and I could hate you for them, but why waste the energy? You’re a part of my life now, and you always will be. We share a son, Regina. We live in the same town. If you were still trying to be actively evil, then sure, I’d fight tooth and nail to keep Henry away from you. But this?” she said, holding up their joined hands. “You’re not exactly a threat these days.”

“Haven’t you learned not to underestimate me, Miss Swan?” Regina’s voice was laced with an aggressive bitterness that matched the hard glint in her eyes.

Unable to help it, Emma laughed. “I’m pretty sure I know what you’re capable of by now.” She’d seen this before. Hell, she’d done this before. For a moment, Regina had seen the life she wanted – Henry back in her house, her chance at happiness so close – and now she’d remembered it might not ever be hers again. She’d remembered the woman she’d been, the woman who had taken what she wanted and damn the consequences, and she’d thought that maybe it had been better that way. She’d been hated and she’d been feared, even by Henry, but at least she’d had him. “You’re not a kitty cat, but you’re not a nightmare. Not anymore.”

“If it helps you sleep at night to think so,” Regina said, though with a hint of a smile teasing at her lips, “then please, Sheriff, pretend I don’t have claws.”


	4. Chapter 4

Emma leaned against the wall of the shower, exhausted. She hadn’t let Regina see it, of course. She’d stayed with her step for step on their run, but now that she was out of sight in the guest bath, she let herself slide down to the floor of the shower with a sigh. Jesus, she was out of shape. She was going to have to cut back on the bear claws if she didn’t want to make a fool of herself.

Her thighs were still burning when she found Regina in the study, shower-wet hair brushed straight back from her face and waiting expectantly. Emma almost stuttered to a stop. Regina was without make-up and barefoot, in wide-legged black pants and a loose fitting, thinly striped tank that looked like it had probably cost a ridiculous amount of money. She looked stunning in a way Emma could never have imagined from a woman whose wardrobe was a cross between business formal and Jackie O, relaxed and effortless and so gorgeous Emma suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

“Something to drink before we start, Miss Swan?”

Emma shook her head numbly, quite sure that adding alcohol to the mix wouldn’t work out well for her.

Regina held her hand out expectantly, and for a moment Emma pictured the evening progressing in an entirely different direction. She saw herself letting herself be drawn in, sliding one knee to either side of Regina’s thighs and sinking down into her lap. She saw herself running her hands up under that conveniently loose tank, sinking her teeth into Regina’s bottom lip, and seeing what Regina tasted like.

She’d had bad ideas before. Most of them she’d even seen through to the end, and enough of those had been the kind of woman who’d been a bad idea from the start for her to know better. And Regina… Regina was maybe the worst idea she’d ever had.

“I, uh, I need to get back,” she said, already backing away. “Snow called and Henry’s not feeling well. It’s a stomach thing. Nothing to worry about, but I should probably go.”

Regina stood immediately, eyes clouding over with concern. “I should…”

“I’ll let you know if it’s anything serious,” Emma said, the lies hot on her tongue. “You know kids. They pick up things all the time. I’m sure he’ll be as good as new by tomorrow. What about you? You’ll be okay?”

Hands wringing together, Regina nodded curtly. “Of course,” she said, a tinge of anger in her voice. It was the same tinge she would get when reminded that yet another moment of Henry’s life was passing her by. “Please. If he needs anything…”

“You’ll be the first to know.”

And like the coward she’d suddenly become, she ran.

******

“Hey,” Henry said, the expression on his face a cross between confusion and guarded surprise. “There’s Mom.”

Since the curse had been broken, Regina had been little more than a self-imposed shut-in, giving herself the house arrest others had agitated in favor of. She went to the grocery, to her sessions with Hopper, supervised sessions with Henry, and, of late, on secluded evening runs with Emma. She did not sit in her car across the street from Henry’s school, watching with concern as kids streamed out for the afternoon. So that meant… shit. She was worried and here to check on Henry because Emma had used her son in a lie.

“What do you think she’s doing here?” Henry asked, looking up at her so innocently that it hurt.

“Uh…” She pulled him to a stop and looked down at him, biting nervously at the corner of her mouth. “I need you to do me a favor, okay? Go over there and tell her you feel better.”

“Better? From what?”

“It’s possible she thinks you were sick last night.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. “Why would she think that?”

“I may have said you were.” Emma sighed deeply, fidgeting under his scrutiny. “Look, just do this for me, okay kid?”

With his arms crossed across his chest and eyes flashing, Henry was Regina through and through. “It’s not right to lie, Emma,” he said, as righteous as she’d ever heard him. “I don’t want my Mom to lie to me anymore, and I shouldn’t lie to her.”

“Wave to her. Give her a thumbs up. That’s not lying, right?”

His eyes narrowed further. “Wait a minute. Why did you lie to her?”

This was what Regina had dealt with, Emma realized, only times, like, a thousand – a nosy, stubborn kid who insisted on doing the one thing least likely to make her life a little bit easier. Was it really such a bad parenting move to teach the kid that a little white lie here and there wasn’t so bad?

She sighed. “Fine, kid. Go talk to her.”

“Is it because you were worried that she might do something bad?” His expression now suspicious, Henry glanced back and forth from Regina, waiting with preternatural patience in the car, to Emma.

“No. I didn’t think she was going to do anything bad. I made a bad decision. I shouldn’t have lied. Happy?”

Henry rolled his eyes, and wow. Nurture was really showcasing itself.

“I know you don’t have a lot of experience, but I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be telling you these things,” Henry said, shaking his head. Then, “Maybe we should invite Mom to the diner for dinner.”

Although she’d only been paying attention to it in the periphery, Emma was aware that people had been giving the former Mayor’s car a wide berth. There were angry glares and not a little fear, and Emma wasn’t entirely sure it’d be a good idea. The way Henry looked at her, though, the way he wanted to make this overture, overrode common sense.

“Sure, kid. She may have plans, though, so don’t get your hopes up, okay?”

By the time he made it to Regina, she was waiting for him. Emma watched as they drew close and then swayed apart. Regina had to shove her hands deep in her pockets to keep herself from drawing him into a hug, and Henry looked up shyly, wanting it to be okay to want that kind of affection. She couldn’t follow the conversation from across the street, but she saw Regina press her hand to Henry’s forehead, allowing herself the comfort of mothering. He allowed it with only the slightest of fidgeting, allowed it, even, when Regina’s hand smoothed his hair back and dropped to his cheek, and suddenly, Emma again felt like she was intruding.

Henry spoke, and Emma felt her stomach clench as Regina’s expression melted, as wonder chased itself across her face followed by a desperate wanting. It clenched even tighter when the wonder disappeared to be replaced by uncertainty, and suddenly they were awkward in each other’s presence, again unsure.

“Hey,” she called out, jogging across the street before she could stop to think, “did you ask her, kid?”

Regina looked up sharply but Emma pressed forward, coming up behind Henry and draping an arm around his shoulders.

“So,” she said, ignoring the tension in the air, ignoring that it was only mid-afternoon, “dinner?”

Maybe it wasn’t especially graceful, but it worked.

******

Regina shifted uncomfortably against the vinyl of the booth, eyes fastened on the menu. Beside her, Henry alternated between sending Emma hopeful glances and Regina tremulous half-smiles.

“This is nice,” Emma said weakly, trying to ignore the fact that half of the diner’s patrons were staring at them.

Even over the top of the menu, Regina’s glare burned.

“Maybe I’ll just go track down Ruby.”

She was out of the booth and gone before anyone could protest. At the bar, she leaned over, looking for a respite. “Ruby,” she whispered. “Hey, Ruby.”

Too close to continue studiously avoiding Emma, Ruby was forced to give up the pretense. “Emma,” she said softly, shaking her head, “what are you doing?”

“Trying to order food. Are you going to come over or what?”

“With her,” Ruby amended pointedly. “It’s not her usual day.”

“What?” She held on to the innocent look despite Ruby’s knowing expression. “Fine. Look, I’m trying to make things right, okay, and Henry invited her. She’s trying, you know.”

“Trying to what? Draw you into her evil web? Brainwash you?”

Emma frowned. “Seriously?”

Ruby huffed, crossed her arms over her chest, and looked away guiltily.

“She’s trying to turn her life around. It’s probably a better idea to help with that than to continue to antagonize her.”

There was enough of Ruby left in Red to make it difficult for her to hold a grudge, Emma decided. “Whatever,” she huffed, propping her hip against the counter. “So, the two of you are getting along these days?”

Emma felt a sharp need to tread carefully. “I guess so. All that stuff from before, we’ve put it behind us. Well, as much as you can. She… she’s Henry’s mother. She may not have been a perfect parent, but she sure as hell gave him a better life than I ever had. I don’t think we can ever say she doesn’t love him.”

Her eyes were drawn to the family in question. Henry had turned in the booth so that he was facing Regina, who was watching him with a guarded, cautiously hopeful expression that made Emma’s chest tighten. They were talking, or rather Henry was talking and Regina was listening intently, and Emma tried to think back over all of the foster families she’d lived with before heading out on her own. They hadn’t all been awful, but none of them had even come close to offering the depth of emotion Regina clearly carried for Henry.

“It’s funny,” Ruby said, both elbows on the counter. “Seeing her like that, you could almost forget she’s evil.”

“Yeah,” Emma echoed softly. “You could.”

******  
“Thank you for inviting me to dinner,” Regina said stiffly.

Emma stepped past her, the routine rote. She toed off her boots, shrugged out of her jacket, and headed in the direction of the study. “It was Henry’s idea,” she called back, shrugging tiredly.

“As you’ve said,” Regina said, her voice soft. “Still, thank you.”

The twinge of unwanted familiarity swept over Emma again as she headed for the wine and poured herself a glass. “And thank you for not turning any of the townspeople into frogs.”

Regina shrugged in acknowledgement. “It was difficult. I do find the sound of them calling to one another at dusk to be quite relaxing.”

Unsure if that was something to be taken seriously of not, Emma ignored it. She took a deep draw on her wine and rubbed a hand against her forehead, already on edge. “We have to do something about your public image,” she said, following the announcement with another long drink. “We have to rehabilitate you.”

She chanced a glance at Regina, who looked equal parts dumbstruck and furious. “Pardon me?”

“With the town,” Emma said, gesturing vaguely. “We have to make it okay for you to be a part of Storybrooke life again.”

“Why, exactly?” Regina asked sharply. “And just when did you and I become a we?”

“We’re co-parenting a kid, Regina. We’re a we.”

“You parent, if you want to call it that, and I parent. I’d consider it a stretch to say we do anything resembling co-parenting.”

“Whatever you want to call it, we have a son we both care about.”

As oblivious as she sometimes seemed, Emma had been a foster child long enough to read the nuances of people’s body language. Acknowledge that Regina was Henry’s mom or that Henry was her son, and Regina did her own version of melting. It was softened eyes and lips, unclenched fists, and shoulders that lost a fraction of the tension they constantly held, and Emma liked it more than she cared to admit.

“Regardless, I don’t really care what the town thinks of me.”

Emma simply stared at her, letting her expression call out the lie. “Your town, the town you built… you don’t care about it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Regina snapped. “I don’t care what the town’s inhabitants think.”

Emma sighed, topped up her glass of wine, and poured another. “So you don’t want to be able to leave your house to hang out with Henry without everyone watching your every move? You don’t want to walk down the street without scaring everyone?” She handed the other glass to Regina, who took it reluctantly. “Or maybe you like being locked up in your house like some kind of pariah. Maybe you want to spend the rest of your life trapped here, staring at the walls.”

“It’s not as if I haven’t spent most of my life trapped in one way or another,” Regina said, any tension she had shed now returned. “This particular prison is more comfortable than most.”

“Maybe,” Emma allowed, “but you’re missing out on a lot. Henry’s playing soccer now. Don’t you want to come to some of his games?”

He was always the pawn between them, Emma allowed. He was the punishment and the prize, and maybe it’d be better for Regina to have something to live for other than him, but Emma didn’t know what it might be.

Regina, who had never really been able to admit when she was wrong, remained stubbornly silent.

“Think about it.” Emma drained the last of her wine and hunted around for a coaster on which to deposit her glass. “They only have two teams because they haven’t figured out how to tell the rest of Maine they’re a legitimate school district, so it’s going to be a long season. You have time.”

They’d been holding hands for nearly ten minutes before Regina spoke again. “Is he good?”

Emma blinked. She’d been on the edge of sleep, wrapped up in the soft, deliciously relaxing fluff of the magic; the question didn’t quite register. “Is who good at what?”

“Henry. Is he good at soccer?”

“I haven’t seen him play yet.”

Regina eyed her cautiously, as if measuring her. “Were you good at athletic pursuits?”

“I didn’t really do sports,” Emma said, trying to ignore the flare of frustrated anger that went along with the words. Sports had cost money her foster parents hadn’t wanted to spend, if they even had it. Uniforms, equipment, shoes – she might as well have wished for a rocket ship. “What about you?”

“I rode horses,” Regina replied, voice oddly distant. “It was an acceptable activity.”

Emma tilted her head to the side so that Regina was in her peripheral vision. “Acceptable for who?”

“For whom,” Regina corrected absently. “And, for young ladies of good birth.”

A joke about princesses and their ponies died on Emma’s tongue. She knew enough about Regina’s history to know that her past was littered with time bombs of its own. “Were you any good at it?”

“I was quite good, actually.” Regina smiled a sad smile. “Although, perhaps it would have been better for everyone involved if I hadn’t been.”

“Maybe you should take it up again. You could probably use a hobby that doesn’t involve plotting the demise of your enemies.”

The roll of Regina’s eyes was practically audible. “Oh, that? I gave it up.”

Emma snorted. “Since when?”

Regina’s imperious tone was back. “Has anyone died at my hand lately? Has anyone even been at the threat of death at my hand? I’ve retired my homicidal ways, Miss Swan. I can only hope that the unwashed mobs extend to me the same courtesy.”

“Has someone been threatening you?”

Silence.

“I’m certainly not in fear of my life, if that’s what you mean.”

“Damn it, Regina. I’m the Sheriff. If someone’s been threatening you, you have to tell me about it. It’s my job to take care of it.”

Regina sniffed. “I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.”

“Maybe, but the point of my job is that you don’t have to.” Emma sighed. “Seriously, Regina. I can take care of it.”

“As if I need a crusading Charming to take up my cause.” Regina laughed bitterly and edged over into Emma’s space, a feral smile on her face. “Especially one who can’t even manage to maintain her composure when confronted with me in casual wear.”

Emma froze.

“Henry doesn’t lie to me, dear, not even for you,” Regina continued, voice as smoothly dangerous as a snake. “He wasn’t sick last night, which begs the question of why you felt the need to tell that particular little white lie. It does make one wonder.”

Emma groaned.

“Would you care to enlighten me?”

“Can’t we just drop this, Regina?” she muttered. “I’m sorry I lied.”

“Let’s see,” Regina said, tapping a finger against her chin. “What possible reason could there be?”

Emma tugged hard at her hand to free it, but Regina held tight.

“Is there something you’d like to share with me?” Her smile widened. It had an edge to it that was almost cruel. “No?”

As Emma’s anxiety grew, she felt her control on her magic slipping. “Let go of me,” she muttered, again giving her hand a tug. She could feel the magic ramping up, heading them both straight toward catatonic bliss.

Expression shifting to neutrality, Regina released Emma’s hand, cupping her own to her chest. “Is that why you agreed to help me? Are you angling for a reward, Sheriff?”

“No.” Emma ran a hand over her face. “Christ, Regina. Not everyone has an ulterior motive. I’m not blind. You’re…” she waved her hand in Regina’s direction and leaned forward, elbows on her thighs. “Christ.”

“It’s not that I’m not flattered.” Regina leaned forward as well, the expression on her face unreadable.

Emma groaned. “Great.”

“And your magic is certainly a point in your favor. I’m sure you’re capable of imagining how the things we do to keep my desire to use magic in check could be intensely pleasurable if put to other uses.”

Though Regina’s voice remained even, Emma felt her blush flare. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“I suppose I’m not entirely averse,” Regina continued, shrugging. “You did say I needed a hobby.”

“Oh my god. I’m not a hobby.”

“Are you shy, dear? Would you rather I seduce you? Should I dig up some candles? You’ve already started on the wine.”

“How about we not do this.”

“No?” Regina tilted her head and put on an innocent expression. “Perhaps I’ve misinterpreted your interest?”

Emma shot to her feet. “Is there a reason you’re being like this?”

“Like what, dear?”

“Look,” Emma said, shoving her hands into her pockets, eyes averted, “I’m not denying that I find you attractive. I’m not denying that I like you. What I don’t like is being toyed with, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re treating me like some kind of, I don’t know… Like it doesn’t matter to you if you hurt me. I thought maybe we were past that.”

Silence stretched between them, growing heavier with each second, until Emma screwed up the courage to look at Regina.

Her arms were crossed and her shoulders hunched. Her expression, mocking just a second before, was the kind of hopeless, bleak sadness that was painful to look upon. “There is a reason why no one chooses to remain in my life,” she said, carefully flicking her hair back over her shoulder in a grab for composure. “You don’t need to stay.”

Emma sighed, and sank down onto the couch beside Regina again. She reached out and took Regina’s hand in hers but kept her magic contained. “It has to be exhausting,” she said, fingers tightening proactively to keep Regina from pulling away from her, “pushing everyone away.”

Regina gave a choked laugh.

“This town, right now, it’s a new start.” Emma laughed at herself at the words. “I mean, I’m living in a town full of fairy tale characters in the middle of Maine. I’m a Sheriff. Me – the girl who had a baby in jail. I have parents who love me, a kid, friends. Most of my life I’ve been alone. I moved around too much to be anything but alone, and after a while, it was easier to make it clear that I wasn’t interested in other people. That way, I didn’t have to deal with the way it felt when they weren’t there anymore, but the thing about Storybrooke, Regina? None of this is going away.”

“You’re right, Miss Swan. I do feel ever so much better.”

Emma ignored the interruption. She turned to face Regina, who turned toward her in response. Regina, with her dark, unreadable eyes and increasingly ragged mask. “Back where you came from, you were the Evil Queen, in charge of everything. I get that. Here, you were the Mayor. Nothing happened in this town without you wanting it to happen, at least until I showed up. Now? You’re just you, Regina. Be whoever you want, because no one is going to care. Maybe they won’t see it, but who you choose to become will matter to the people who matter to you. Stay the same if you want. Stay angry and bitter and alone, or do something about it.”

Regina’s jaw flexed and Emma felt her stomach sink. Denials would be next. Recriminations. Accusations. How dare she’s.

The kiss was hard, bruising. Regina’s hand was at the back of her head, holding her still, and she stiffened. Her options were to pull away or submit, and while she didn’t love either of them, she sure as hell wasn’t going to pull away.

“Regina,” she said, the word muffled by the hard press of Regina’s lips against hers.

Regina pulled back and scowled, a hint of the malevolent Evil Queen in her gaze. “Shut up, Miss Swan,” she said, nails crooking into the skin at the back of Emma’s neck.

“Wait,” Emma said, bringing a hand up to Regina’s shoulder as Regina looked set to move forward again. “This isn’t the way to do this.”

Any vulnerability she’d displayed moments before now buried, Regina smirked. “Oh? Are you quite sure?”

Her voice was liquid sin, and Emma swallowed hard, closing her eyes to remind herself of why she’d just thrown up a roadblock to something she’d realized she very much so wanted.

“This shouldn’t be about you being angry or desperate or, I don’t know, sad,” Emma said, taking in a deep breath. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, it’s not like I have a lot of willpower here, but I’m trying to do the right thing.”

Regina’s eyes narrowed. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that sleeping together would mean something,” she said, nails still digging into Emma’s skin. “There’s nothing sacred for you to protect, Sheriff. Either you want this or you don’t.”

“Oh, I want this,” Emma said, gently disentangling herself from Regina’s grasp, “just not like this. Are we going to fall in love and live happily ever after? Probably not, but that’s not a good enough excuse. You don’t have to love me. You don’t even have to like me. You do have to respect me enough to not do it like this.”

She stood, watched as Regina’s expression turned bitter. “Is that it, then?” When she looked up at Emma, her eyes blazed hot. “My past doesn’t matter now that you want to have sex with me?”

Somewhere along the way, Emma had bumbled into a conversation much more complex than the already complex conversation she’d thought she was having. “What do you want me to say, Regina? It will never not matter, but it’s your past.” She sighed. “I don’t even know how we got here. What if you’d been wrong? What if I hadn’t been into you at all? It’s pretty arrogant of you to think that the only reason I might have lied was because I wanted to sleep with you.”

“Not arrogance, dear,” Regina said haughtily, folding her hands primly in her lap and schooling her expression into impassivity. “Experience. I know my strengths.”

Emma blinked at her, not sure how to respond. “We’re better than this,” she said finally, voice hard but for the slight tremor that ran through it. “I’m done playing games. I’m tired of it. I’m trying to be your friend here, and I thought you were trying too. If there’s something more, it’s not because you owe me or think you can use it to control me. Nothing’s ever been normal with you. You can’t let anything be easy or natural, and that’s fine. You think it’s easy for me to trust? But whatever it is, it has to be real. Do you even want me or is it all a game to you? If it is, then game over, Regina. Be my friend because you want to, or be Henry’s other mom who has to put up with me, and we’ll have an understanding and that’s all we’ll be to one another.” She pushed to her feet and grabbed her jacket from the back of the couch. “I’m going home. Let me know what you decide.”

She thought Regina might call her back, but she didn’t.


	5. Chapter 5

Emma rubbed her eyes, feeling the threat of a headache looming behind them. Sometimes, she missed being a bounty hunter. She missed living out of her suitcase, not having to worry about anyone other than herself. Maybe it was cowardly, because having responsibilities and people who cared about her was hard, but she was owed a little bit of coward time. Being expected to save people all the time was tiring and mostly thankless. Hell, sometimes she even missed the days when Regina ran the town with an iron fist, and the hardest thing she had to do was get a cat down out of a tree.

“Sleeping on the job, Sheriff?”

She jumped in her chair, a hand drifting to her chest. “Jesus,” she huffed. “Where the hell did you come from?”

It was as if her thoughts had come to life. Regina was standing in front of her in one of her Mayoral power suits, hand on her hip and glowering.

“I drove, in case you were worried that I’d reverted to more instantaneous means of travel.”

Emma’s brow scrunched in confusion. “Why?”

Regina didn’t get out much these days, and certainly not to see her.

“You missed dinner last night,” Regina said, voice carefully void of inflection.

So she’d dropped Henry off on Regina’s doorstep without even hanging around long enough to say hello. After the… she couldn’t even call it a fight. After whatever had happened between them the night previous, it had seemed like the most prudent course of action. Not chicken shit at all.

“You should be happy about that,” she said, pushing her hair back out of her face. “Don’t you want Henry all to yourself sometimes?”

Regina’s expression was unreadable. “Of course I do, Sheriff, but you missed family night.”

Emma’s mouth went dry. Having Regina settle daintily into the chair alongside her desk, legs crossed in a way that made it impossible for Emma not to stare, certainly didn’t help.

“I did what?”

“Henry feels most comfortable if he’s in the company of both of his mothers on the nights we dine together,” Regina said, smoothing her skirt over her thighs. “He needs stability right now, not a parent who’s in and out of his life because she can’t manage to face up to the consequences of her actions.”

“My actions?” Emma’s voice went embarrassingly shrill. “I’m not the one who went all crazy vamp because she couldn’t deal, lady.”

“No. You simply ran away.”

A blush burned along Emma’s cheeks. “Did you really come here to have this discussion?”

Regina’s expression made it clear that the subject was being retired for the moment, not forever. “No,” she said, retrieving a bag Emma hadn’t even noticed she’d been carrying when she’d entered. “I came to bring you lunch.”

Emma’s blush darkened.

“I know you feed yourself for most of the week on my left-overs,” Regina continued, pulling out a set of storage containers. There were more of them, Emma could tell, tucked away neatly.

Regina with Emma’s lunch in tow was dressed in the mayor’s armor, each fold of fabric and strand of hair flawless.

“Thanks,” Emma said, aware of the inadequacy of the words. Of course Regina owned the kind of lunch container that had a perfect place for everything. The roll-up – hummus, cucumbers, feta, chicken, a bite of something spicy – was cut in half and neatly wrapped, and the accompanying salad looked annoyingly healthy but was astonishingly good, and Emma tried to remember to eat with something approaching good manners. “Where’s yours?”

Regina shrugged a shoulder and looked away. “You didn’t need to absent yourself.”

Emma swallowed and reached for her coffee, suddenly self-conscious. “I thought maybe it’d be good to have a little time to get things back to normal after… you know.”

“Yes, about that,” Regina began, voice distant. She turned back to Emma slowly, a wistful expression on her face. “I suppose I should apologize.”

Emma had pulled her hair back in a messy ponytail looped around on itself, not bothering with the strands that chose to hang loose. When Regina reached forward carefully to tuck one of them behind her ear, she froze. She wanted to close her eyes and melt into the touch – it’d been so long since anyone had taken the liberty and longer still since she’d wanted anyone to – but instinct told her to hold still.

“You’ve been very kind to me, Emma Swan,” Regina continued. “Kind when you had no reason to be. It’s not really something I’ve ever had much occasion to experience, but even I know that kindness freely given shouldn’t be returned with cruelty. My mother would have said that kindness is a weakness, but I can’t help but think it takes strength to show it to someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“Regina…”

Regina stood abruptly, smoothing down the front of her skirt. “You can return those this weekend,” she said, gesturing to the bag, “or send them with Henry if you choose to stay away a bit longer.”

As quickly as she’d appeared, she was gone.

******

Ruby was at her side as soon as she stepped into the diner. “Was that Regina’s car outside of the Sheriff’s station today?”

“Do you run some kind of spy network?” Emma asked, both brows raised in surprise.

Unfazed, Ruby waited impatiently for an answer.

Emma sighed. “Yeah, it was Regina. She came by to talk about Henry.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie, and Emma had no reason to feel bad about telling one regardless. “There are some things we need to iron out. You don’t happen to know her favorite, do you?”

Ruby blinked, momentarily speechless. “Regina’s?”

“I might as well try to get on her good side, right?” Emma said, feeling strangely uneasy. All weirdness from the past couple of days aside, Regina was her friend, right? And she could hang out with her friend if she wanted without feeling like she was trying to hide some kind of criminal conspiracy. “I’m going to head over and finish our talk.”

The look Ruby gave her was sly, a gentle accusation without words. “I know her favorite,” she said, grinning. “You need to watch yourself.”

“What?” Emma asked innocently.

“That’s a seriously bad decision you’re thinking about making.”

“Can you just get the food, Rubes? Whatever Regina’s favorite is, give me two.”

Ruby laughed. “You sure about that?”

Emma considered what it might be, and shook her head. “You’re right. I’ll take the meatloaf.”

She probably should have told Regina she was coming, Emma thought, standing at the door to 108 Mifflin with a bag full of food dangling from her hand. Regina would be in the middle of her own dinner. She wouldn’t want her there, maybe wouldn’t even open the door.

“Miss Swan?”

Regina was peering out at her from a door opened a scant half foot, half of her face hidden. The other half looked wary, her eyes tracking out to the road as if expecting to see a cavalry riding to Emma’s aid.

“You going to let me in or not?” Emma asked, hitching up the bag. “I brought dinner.”

After another moment, Regina swung the door open wide and took a step back, letting Emma step inside.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” Regina said, voice inscrutable.

Emma, in the middle of toeing off her boots, held out the bag she’d brought from Granny’s. Regina took it out of reflex, and Emma stripped off her jacket just like she’d been doing for the past several weeks. Wiggling her socked feet against the hardwood floor, she took in a deep breath. “You hungry?”

Regina studied her for a moment before nodding. “We can eat in the kitchen,” she said, as always leading and leaving Emma to follow.

She wasn’t the kind of woman to eat out of takeout containers, of course, and Emma would have known that if she’d ever stopped to think about it. Regina pulled down plates and set out napkins. She brought out a bottle of wine and real silverware, and made Emma wait until everything passed muster before allowing her to sit.

“I’ve never had the salmon,” Emma said, using her fork to gesture, because it was apparently Regina’s favorite.

“It’s quite good,” Regina said, pausing to wipe her lips before she took a sip of wine. “And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the surprise, Miss Swan, but why are you here?”

Emma speared a chunk of meatloaf and scooped up a side of mashed potatoes. “Same reason I’m always here. You didn’t think I was giving up on you, did you? After dinner, we’ve got some hand holding to do.”

“And this?” Regina gestured to the plate in front of her.

“Maybe I’m just returning the favor,” Emma said, her voice soft enough to keep the words from sounding defensive. “Maybe I just wanted to spend a little time with you.”

Over the rim of her wineglass, Regina’s expression was closed off.

“Maybe,” Emma continued, looking down at her plate, “it seemed like you’d decided that you wanted to be my friend. Was I wrong?”

This time, it was Regina who looked away. “And is that all you want?”

Regina’s voice was neutral; there was no clue for Emma, no idea if this was a trap or an opportunity, and so she swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and spoke as honestly as she could bring herself to do. “What I want is complicated. I’m at that place where I’ve got to figure out which way to go, and that depends on you, Regina. I didn’t exactly expect to find myself here, and I need a sign. I don’t need to decide if I can be your friend. I’m already your friend, at least I think I am. I mean, I guess you can’t really be friends with someone if they don’t want to be friends back.”

For a long moment, Regina watched her silently. “I’ll take friendship, Miss Swan,” she said finally, her voice the kind of warm and deep that made Emma go a bit wobbly. “We’ll see about the rest.”

******

With handholding and the unexpectedly dubbed ‘family night’ back on track – or at least what seemed like on track because with Regina, nothing could ever be taken for granted – Emma felt almost confident enough to think that what she was about to do wouldn’t blow up in her face. 

“Emma?” Regina asked, startled, as she opened the door, and Emma let the warmth settle for a moment, the use of her first name still new enough to be special.

“You’ve got 10 minutes,” Emma said, shoving the tee shirt she was holding at Regina.

That she’d managed to truly catch Regina off-guard was clearly evident by the lingering look of confusion. “What?”

“Go,” Emma said, flicking her eyes up the stairs. “Change. Henry’s game starts in less than half an hour.”

Regina looked down, finally registering the tee, and Emma held back a smirk at the look of horror that was slowly spreading across her face.

“If you think…”

“All the parents have them,” Emma said softly, arching a brow in what could be perceived as challenge. She unzipped her jacket, showing a matching purple tee. She twisted the knife gleefully. “I think Henry would like it.”

There was something very satisfying about seeing the former Evil Queen so easily defeated. “Very well,” Regina said, her displeasure evident in her voice. And then, more tentatively, “I would like to see him play.”

Regina, hopeful but terrified of showing it, might as well have been a kitten nuzzling a baby seal.

“Hurry up,” Emma said gently. “We want to get good seats.”

When Regina returned in less than her allotted 10 minutes, she was wearing a pair of designer jeans and high-heeled ankle boots, with her shirt tucked in with military precision. It was the least casual Emma had seen anyone look in a tee-shirt, which was made even more impressive by the classic sports scrawl of “Storybrooke Dragons” across the front.

“Are you sure Henry wants me to be seen in public wearing this?” Regina asked, and it was only because Emma was finally beginning to figure her out that she heard the uncertainty underlying the briskness in her tone. Regina turned slowly, and the words ‘HENRY’S MOM’ written in white along the width of her shoulders were the clear culprit behind her hesitation.

“Of course he does,” Emma said, letting her jacket dip down over her shoulders as she showed Regina her back. “Same as mine.”

She held her breath, waiting for the protest or the snide remark, but Regina was strangely silent.

“I believe you mentioned time being of the essence?”

There was a reassuring quality to the haughty arrogance Regina was scrambling to maintain.

“After you, your Majesty.”

******

Seeing Regina pick her way across the field, trying to maintain her dignity in capricious heels, almost made having to carry both camp chairs worth it.

“Somewhere in the middle,” she called, seeing Regina pause. She waved vaguely, and shrugged at Regina’s less than pleased expression. It wasn’t the only expression turned her way that was telegraphing something other than joy and happiness, but she’d expected that. One didn’t bring the Evil Queen out of her mansion to mingle with the townsfolk and anticipate that everything would go smoothly. That’s why she’d chosen public, with kids, and sure, the tee shirt couldn’t hurt. They were all just parents watching their kids play soccer, and once the game got into gear, everyone would probably even forget Regina was in their midst.

“Just how does this game work?” Regina asked, settled into her chair and smiling and waving back at an excited Henry.

Emma shrugged. “They kick the ball around and try to get it in the other team’s goal.”

Henry looked adorable in his uniform, with the purple jersey, white shorts, and purple and white striped socks, and Emma felt the warmth of pride flow through her. She’d done that, had signed him up for soccer, gotten him a uniform, and gotten him to the field. Maybe she’d never be mom of the year, wouldn’t be able to know what Henry needed before he even knew for himself the way Regina always seemed to do, even when Henry hadn’t been speaking to her. She’d never bake homemade cookies and squeeze lemons for homemade lemonade, but she’d done this. And on top of that, she’d brought Regina with her, and both of Henry’s moms were going to see him play soccer.

“Oh,” Regina said, her hand clamping down on Emma’s forearm, “he has the ball. He’s… What is that girl doing? Can she do that? Can she take the ball away like that?”

She settled in for a long afternoon and spent almost as much of it watching Regina watch the game as she did actually watching the game for herself. Caught up in a kid’s soccer game, Regina, and the rest of Storybrooke with her, seemed normal. It felt like she was in a town that was nothing more than it seemed – sleepy and idyllic, the kind of place where townsfolk went to festivals and summer crafts shows and spent the whole winter dreaming of beach vacations.

“What are the rules of this game?” Regina asked irritably, hands tightening on the arms of her chair. “Why, exactly, was that wrong?”

Emma pulled out her smartphone, called up Wikipedia, typed in soccer, and handed it to Regina. “Knock yourself out,” she said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms behind her head. It was the kind of afternoon she’d dreamed about back in jail, one hand resting on her swollen belly and the other draped across her eyes. Maybe not this, exactly, but she’d thought about her kid – a good kid, a smart kid, a kid who had people who loved him – with a blessedly normal life, doing the kind of things kids did when they lived in perfect, not-in-the-system families.

“Miss Swan!”

Regina’s nails were digging into her forearm again, and Emma blinked back the memory and pulled herself into the present. Regina was on the edge of her seat, following the action on the field with the attention of a hawk.

“I believe he’s going to score,” Regina said, voice low and intense. “He’s going to… He’s…”

The shot wasn’t the most beautiful thing in the world, but Henry’s smile when he turned toward them, hands in the air, quite possibly was. Emma gave him a big wave and a thumbs-up. Regina’s genuine, thrilled smile might have been enough in itself, but the way she was clapping earnestly was enough to make the kid blush.


	6. Chapter 6

It couldn’t last, because Storybrooke wasn’t an unassuming, sleepy little town.

“It isn’t right,” Emma heard, the words almost a growl, and she felt her stomach drop. It was too much to ask, just one perfect afternoon, so she turned slowly, hand on her hip.

Michael, with one arm around a sweaty Ava, was glaring at them.

“Not the time,” Emma said, catching sight of Henry approaching quickly. “Not the place.” Beside her, she felt Regina stiffen.

“Why do you get to come here?” he asked, his expression a mix of confusion, anger, and hurt. “For all those years, you kept me away from my family. Why do you get to enjoy yours?”

“Come on,” Emma said softly, taking a step toward him. “Don’t do this here.”

“I don’t need protecting, Sheriff,” Regina said, and her voice was low and cold. Emma was almost afraid to look at her, not wanting to see the hard eyes of the Mayor in the face that had been radiant with joy just moments before. “The man has the right to speak his mind.”

She wasn’t sure who was more surprised.

“Archie tells me I need to make amends, but I think we all know some things are unforgivable. There are things I can’t forgive of others, and it only stands to reason that some of the things I’ve done can’t be forgiven.”

Perhaps it was just because she was standing so close, but Emma felt the call for magic literally pulsing off of Regina. It was something living, a serpent whispering seductive provocations, and it was wrapping around Regina like a cloak.

“Regina,” she said softly, reaching out to place her hand on Regina’s arm. She opened the tap on her magic, hoping to diffuse the situation, but Regina shrugged free.

“It isn’t fair,” Michael said, still angry, though less so. He watched Regina carefully, as if waiting for the strike, guarded and wary but resolute.

Regina gave him a tight, humorless smile. “Perhaps it isn’t, but no world is fair. I certainly learned that lesson well enough. You have your family once again. You have love in your life. I can’t tell you not to hold on to your hatred, but I’d advise you to learn from the lessons of others.”

A small crowd was gathering; if Emma knew her crowd dynamics, and she did, they were at the tipping point where things could turn from tense to violent in a flash.

“Okay,” she said, stepping forward and using her Sheriff’s voice, “show’s over, everybody. Regina, if you’d come with me.”

She practically pulled Regina from the field, Henry tripping along behind them, eyes wide. They made it to the car, made it until all of the gear was stowed and everyone was safe inside with doors closed, before Regina reached out for Emma’s hand with a clawing desperation.

“Hey,” Emma said, opening the exchange of magic between them, “good job.” She ignored the way Henry was watching them from the backseat, eyes flicking between his two moms with nervous agitation.

“Not smiting someone who doesn’t deserve it doesn’t exactly deserve your kudos, Sheriff.”

“I’m not a therapist or whatever, but I do know it’s important to celebrate successes. You fought your natural impulses, and you won. So, good job.”

Regina looked over at her with a deadly cold sneer. “If you think my impulses are natural, you’re mistaken. I wasn’t born full of evil. I let myself become that way. In fact, I welcomed it.” She stopped abruptly, as if only just becoming aware of Henry watching her from the backseat. “Evil is weakness, and I was weak for a very long time.”

It was because she was aware of Henry’s attention that Emma said, “My life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses, and I was angry about that for a long time. I indulged in that anger and hurt other people because I was hurting. The difference is, I lived in this world, where people noticed that kind of thing and tried to get me help. Did anyone ever help you, Regina? Did anyone ever see you were going off the deep end and try to pull you back?”

Regina shut her eyes and leaned back against the seat. She pulled her hand free and became the reserved Mayor as easily as pulling on another skin.

“If you’d be so kind to take me home, I believe it’s time to go.”

******

It took a while, but Emma had learned patience waiting for fugitives to show. Having her son work up the guts to talk to her about what had happened was just as nerve-wracking, but she’d had plenty of practice.

“What did you mean?” he asked, looking up at her over the half-eaten sandwich she’d made him for dinner. “You… when did you hurt people?”

And maybe she’d been expecting something else, something about Regina that she could maybe handle, but fair enough. “You know I moved around a lot when I was a kid,” she said. She thought about deflecting the question. Then again, Henry was a kid, true, but it didn’t always help to hide things from him and pretend that nothing was wrong. Not that she had to go into the dirty details, but a little perspective would probably be good for him. “I felt like I was alone and that no one loved me or cared for me, and that made me angry, kind of like the way your mom felt. I wasn’t that much older than you when I started stealing things, sometimes from people who didn’t have much more than me. There are a lot of ways you can hurt someone, Henry, and sometimes it’s by taking something that they’ve worked hard for or that means a lot to them. You can hurt them by lying to them or trying to trick them, and I did a lot of lying and I played a lot of bad tricks on people. One of the differences between me and your mom, though, is that when I started doing those things, people noticed. I didn’t want help, but they tried to give it to me anyway, and before I could do anything too bad, I got caught. I went to jail, and I had a lot of time to think and there were some people I could talk to, and I was pregnant with you. I had a wake-up call, but I won’t pretend like I was perfect after I got out. It took time for me to get my act together.”

“But you didn’t kill people,” he said sulkily; she could practically see him searching for a way to shine away the tarnish she’d applied to his image of her. “She did.”

“Yeah, she killed people. Back there, where she’s from, lots of people killed people. It’s a different place. I’m not trying to tell you that what she did was right, because it wasn’t. But, she’s trying to be a better person now, and if she’s going to be a better person, she’s going to need people around her who want her to be a better person because it’ll be good for her. She needs people who are going to help her and who are going to make sure she stays on the right path, and not just because they’re waiting for her to slip up so they can say ‘I told you so’. If she does slip up, she needs people there who will remind her why she’s trying so hard.”

“I guess.” He sighed. “She did do pretty good this afternoon, right?”

“She did.”

“And you’re helping her?”

Emma smiled encouragingly. “I am. You are too.”

“How?”

“Henry, your mom loves you more than anything else in the world. Just having you around helps her.”

He cut his eyes at her, the calculating look in them pure Regina. “Is that why you were holding her hand? Because you’re helping her?”

She thought about all of the ways she could go about trying to explain what she was doing with Regina, and settled on, “It is.”

After a long moment, he took another bite of his sandwich, and Emma felt tension she didn’t even realize she was holding leave her.

“Think she’ll come to another one of my games?”

Emma smiled. “I’m pretty sure I can talk her into it.”

******

When Regina opened the door later that night, she’d changed out of the tee shirt and into one of the silk blouses she’d favored as mayor. She was scowling, and for a moment, Emma flashed back to the days before the curse ended when this was a regular occurrence.

“Going to let me in?”

Regina took a silent step back.

“Okay,” Emma said, depositing her boots by the door, “what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Since she’d flown by her quota for dealing with emotional scenes hours before, Emma simply shrugged. “You can tell me or not, but I’m not going to pretend like you’re not upset.”

If she expected a reply, it was an exercise in futility. Good, it appeared, was a pretty thankless occupation.

When she joined Regina in the study, a glass of cider in her hand, it was to find Regina staring intently at the fireplace. It was too warm for a fire though wood was, of course, stacked artfully behind the screen. Everything about Regina’s life was artful, everything placed perfectly, staged to showcase a flawless façade. And in the middle of all of this perfection, Regina sat with her perfectly neutral face, spine perfectly straight and hands folded perfectly in her lap.

“Henry asked if you’d come to more of his games,” she said, flopping down on the couch. “He liked having you there.”

Regina’s jaw clenched and unclenched, but she didn’t speak.

“I’ll leave you a schedule. You, uh, you want to get started? I don’t want to push, but it’s been kind of a long day.”

“You’re free to return home, Miss Swan.”

Regina’s voice was cool, and damn it. This was something with which she was going to have to deal. She sighed. “The sooner you convince me you’re not going to lose it and have some kind of major backslide, the sooner I’m out of your hair.”

“You honestly think I’m going to, what? Seek vengeance against that peasant?” Regina sneered, dark eyes flashing with anger.

“Could we not, with the peasant stuff? And I don’t know what you’re going to do, Regina. You’re not entirely predictable when you’re angry. I can’t tell when it’s going to be all bark, or when there’s going to be bite.”

“I’m not angry,” Regina said, each word bitten and curt.

Emma was about to call bullshit when she pulled up short. There was something about Regina’s inflection that brought to mind the memory of sitting in front of countless counselors and social workers, belligerent and sure that no one was interested in really taking the time to get to know her. To understand her, or her problems. Who wouldn’t put forth the effort to dig any deeper, and she sure as hell wasn’t giving anything up without a fight. Hell, not even a fight. Just the slightest indication that someone was willing to scratch below the surface would have been enough.

“If you’re not angry, what are you? Because you’re something, and I want to know what.”

Regina blinked, startled, and Emma waited.

“Just do what you came to do,” Regina said sharply, pushing up out of her chair and stalking over to the couch. She sat beside Emma and gripped her hand roughly, bristling as she waited.

Emma considered refusing. She considered holding Regina hostage until she gave in, but it was the kind of thing that would have made her angry if someone had done it to her, and as touchy as her temper could sometimes be, it was nothing in comparison to Regina’s. Besides, maybe she’d learned something in all the time she’d been spending with Regina, and maybe that something was that if Regina was going to talk, she was going to do it when she was ready.

As the magic began to flow between them, Regina’s posture relaxed. Emma settled in, tried not to fall asleep, and waited.

It took longer than usual, but her patience was rewarded. “He shouldn’t have seen it.”

Emma squeezed her hand in encouragement. “Who?”

Regina looked away and sighed. “Henry.”

The magic made it hard to think, made her mind fuzzy. Clarity would be helpful, probably, but she didn’t think Regina would be open to talking when the world was crystal clear.

“The thing with Michael?”

“That too, I suppose,” Regina said softly, “though I imagine he’s aware of the townsfolk’s feelings regarding me. It can’t be easy for him.”

Emma shrugged. “They’re probably too afraid to mess with him.”

“Perhaps.”

It took her a moment, but Emma thought she grasped the problem. “In the car? After?”

From the way Regina stiffened, she assumed she’d hit the nail on the head.

“Because he saw you weren’t perfect? Because he saw that you’re struggling with this? Do you think he doesn’t already know that you’re struggling with this? Because he does. He’s a smart kid, Regina.”

“Knowing something isn’t the same as seeing it.”

“Maybe he needs to see it.” Emma took in a deep breath and steeled herself for Regina’s wrath. “He’s a good kid and I love him, but he thinks good is good and evil is evil and it doesn’t do any good to let him. That’s what being a kid is about, right, learning things? And he needs to learn that he can’t always take things at face value. He needs to learn that the world is more complicated than good and evil, and that most people are a little bit of both.”

“I spent his childhood protecting him from the uglier truths, Miss Swan. I learned them early and I don’t see how I benefitted from it.”

Emma thought about her own childhood, and couldn’t really disagree.

“Besides, I think he’s seen enough of my failures.”

“I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot about this kind of thing, but it seems to me like letting him see and get to know the real you can only be a good thing. You’re not a monster and you’re not infallible. That’s what I’ve learned, and I like this you a hell of a lot better than the one I knew before.”

“Correction, Miss Swan. You want to sleep with this version.”

There didn’t seem to be any mileage in denying it, so Emma didn’t even try. “They’re not mutually exclusive. I can think you’re a decent person who’s worth knowing and I can think you’re fuckable.”

“Charming,” Regina muttered.

“You’re the one who keeps bringing it up, usually when you want me to feel uncomfortable so that you can stop feeling uncomfortable. So guess what? I’m deciding right here and now that I don’t care. You’re hot. I’ll deal with it. You deal with your own monsters, lady.”

“So I’m a monster now? I thought I was a quote unquote decent person just a moment ago.”

It’d been a long day. It’d been a long day and she’d spent it trying to clean up messes centered on the woman sitting beside her, and Emma had had enough. She was tired and she wanted to go home and she wanted this Savior thing to be someone else’s responsibility for just a little while, so she pulled her hand free, breaking the connection between them, and stood. Regina took being difficult to deal with to a professional level, and Emma’s tank was running low.

“You drive me crazy,” she said, glaring down at a clearly unrepentant Regina. “I’m trying to help you here, and you just make it so hard. The only times you seem like a real human being are when you let the mask crack a little. It’s scary to lose control. I understand. But Regina, seriously, the Evil Queen persona pushes everyone away, even the people you want to bring closer – like Henry.”

Regina stood with a sharp, aggressive movement that had her leaning into Emma’s space before Emma could take a step back. “And what if this is who I really am? What then? Perhaps I should pretend, so that everyone else can take comfort in thinking I’ve been domesticated.”

“I don’t think you even know who you are,” Emma said, shaking her head. “How many different personalities do you have bouncing around in your brain?”

She could almost see it happening, the way Regina teetered before snapping. “I don’t know, Miss Swan. How many did I need to survive? The good little girl, so Mother wouldn’t punish me. The obedient wife, so I didn’t displease the King. Evil, so they would know I wasn’t weak. The good mother, so Henry might love me. Penitent, so they might let me live. And who do you want me to be? The seductress? It’s one of my better roles, I have to admit.”

Regina was inches away, and yeah, Emma thought, she was good at that one. With her dark eyes and her taunting grin, with a body that’d gone liquid and an aura that seemed to invite want, she was the kind of mistake Emma’s body was clambering to make.

“Be whoever you really are,” Emma said, voice hoarse, exhausted, “so the rest of us can finally know. And stop playing games with me, okay? I don’t have the stomach for it anymore.”

******

When she showed up at Regina’s house with Henry in tow, not looking forward to having dinner with them but not going to avoid it either, it was to find that Regina had reverted back into a Stepford mother, down to the apron.

“Won’t you come in?” she said, perfect hostess smile firmly in place. The house smelled delicious, both rich and sweet, and Emma wondered if it would work, miming perfection.

Probably not, she decided halfway through dinner, through roasted pork chops and potatoes and carrots, because the atmosphere was as tense as it’d ever been. She caught Henry looking to her for guidance, not quite sure how to deal with a Regina who seemed convinced to give ‘fake it until you make it’ the hard press.

“This is really good,” Emma mumbled, reverting to her default. “Delicious.”

When Regina disappeared into the kitchen to fetch dessert, Henry leaned over, eyes wide. “What’s wrong with my mom?”

The answer to that was something that’d take longer than the few minutes they had before Regina returned, so she shrugged, offered him an encouraging smile, and said, “She just wants everything to be perfect.”

He scowled. “I don’t want things to be perfect. I want things to be normal. Well, normal for her.”

“Pie?” Regina asked, breezing through the door with plates in one hand and a steaming pie in the other. “It’s blueberry.”

******

“You’re freaking Henry out,” Emma murmured, accepting a dish and running a cloth over it to dry it. She’d sent Henry up to his room with a significant look and he’d nodded at her with one of his own, ever eager to embrace a new secret operation. “How about you just chill it with the June Cleaver routine.”

Regina’s response of choice was to refuse to acknowledge her existence.

“You think he doesn’t know you, Regina? There’s probably no one on earth who knows you better, and he knows this isn’t you. He doesn’t want some flawless example of motherhood. He wants you, even with the crazy that comes with you. Hell, if you weren’t a little crazy, he’d probably think you’d been abducted by aliens and replaced with some kind of pod person.” She paused, considered bumping her shoulder against Regina’s, but pushed the impulse away. “You’re not a pod person, are you? Because I’m still figuring out our Regina. I don’t know if I have the energy to start all over with a new one.”

This time Regina did react. She wrapped her hands around the edge of the counter and dropped her head, sighing loudly. “After all I’ve done, I suppose having to deal with you is still only a minor punishment,” she said tiredly.

It was an oddly reassuring statement.

“Come on,” Emma said, wrapping her hand around Regina’s wrist and tugging lightly. “Henry will have snuck downstairs by now. He’s going to be playing video games until it’s time to go.”

She led Regina down the hallway and out of the house, into the peace and quiet of the back yard. They settled onto the little loveseat, the silence between them almost companionable, and Emma took a moment to relax. With the sky open wide above her and the air full of the rustle of crickets and the soft whisper of the breeze through the trees, she felt the tension begin to seep from her shoulders.

“You haven’t been by for a run lately,” Regina said finally, softly, as if she was loath to break the silence.

“Things haven’t exactly been stable lately.” As if by instinct, her hand sought out Regina’s, their fingers twining together. The magic began to flow between them, wrapping them in a layer of cotton. “You don’t make things easy. Lately, I don’t know which one of you I’m going to get.”

And Regina, perhaps as relaxed by their connection as Emma was, tightened her grip. “I don’t know what to do with you, Miss Swan. You defy rationality.”

“Since when have you been rational?”

Regina nodded, as if allowing the point. “I can’t seem to rid myself of you,” she said, though not harshly. “You’re irritatingly persistent.”

“Not on purpose.”

“Of course you are. You’re going to save me.” Any other time, Regina’s voice would have been taunting. “Things were much easier when I could simply hate you.”

“You mean you don’t?”

Regina laughed humorlessly. “I think we both know that’s not the case.” She took a deep breath. When Regina settled, Emma felt the warmth of her seeping into her side. “You asked me if I knew who I was. I think we both know the answer to that… I don’t. I know who I’ve been. I think I know who I might want to be. It’s working out the in-between that’s been difficult.”

“Yeah.” Emma smiled crookedly, watching the leaves of Regina’s apple tree shift in the breeze so intently she felt her vision going fuzzy. “After I got out of jail, after I gave up Henry, I was a mess. I didn’t want to go back to the life I’d been living before, but I didn’t know how to move forward. I just kind of drifted around for a while, trapped between the two. I wasn’t good. I was still up to my old tricks, even while I told myself I wanted to be better, but I knew I wasn’t going back either. Nothing really happened that I can point back at and say was the moment when things really changed. I became a less shitty person day by day until I’d gone far enough that backsliding wasn’t an option, but I didn’t have anybody watching me. Not like you do. I didn’t have anybody waiting to see if I slipped up.”

“I assume you didn’t have any help either.”

She blinked, bringing the night back into focus. “No, but I had a reason to be better I hadn’t had before.”

“Henry.”

“Not that I thought I’d ever see him again, but I didn’t like the thought of the kid having a fuck-up for a mom.”

“Instead he had an Evil Queen for one.”

Emma shrugged. “An Evil Queen who loved him, and who gave a big house and nice clothes and all the toys he could want. A mother who took care of him. It wasn’t easy, giving him up, but I knew I wouldn’t be any good for him. I was a kid myself. He deserved better, and he got it.”

“I believe he would beg to differ.”

“Oh, he was mad you,” Emma said, risking the bump to Regina’s shoulder she’d refrained from earlier. “You kind of deserved it. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you, and it doesn’t mean he doesn’t know, even if he doesn’t always want to, that the two of you were happy together.”

“Were,” Regina repeated bitterly. “Before…”

“He didn’t really know who you were before. This is better.”

“I can’t really say that anyone has ever found themselves better off for having known me.”

“Well, they have now.”

For a long moment, they sat in silence.

“You should know,” Regina said carefully, breaking it as if inching over dangerously thin ice, “that I’m sorry for the way I treated you. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of your attraction to me the way I did.”

In the darkness, Emma grimaced, the subject not one she was exactly dying to discuss.

“You should also know,” Regina continued, voice going tight, “that it isn’t necessarily unreciprocated.”

Emma felt her heart skip a beat in surprise. “Oh,” she said, embarrassingly breathless, pretty sure that meant what she thought it meant. “Okay.”

Regina’s fingers on her chin were incongruously gentle, bringing her face around so that they were disturbingly close. “This isn’t a promise,” she said, eyes boring into Emma’s as she inched forward. The kiss was soft, almost sweet, and despite trying to hold herself back, Emma melted into it. She pressed against Regina, free hand coming up to rest on the back of her neck, and followed her lead. The kiss deepened slowly, lush and unhurried, until Regina pulled away, licking her lips. For a moment, they stared at each other, both breathing hard, and then Emma darted forward with a moan. Their second kiss escalated more quickly, integrated teeth and tongues; it was the kind of kiss that ignored the passage of time. When they broke apart again, it took long seconds to return to reality, to the knowledge that Henry was somewhere inside.

“Miss Swan,” Regina began, voice thin and breathless.

“Emma,” Emma said, refusing to be embarrassed by the note of pleading in her tone. “Please, can you just… Just call me Emma. Please.”

Regina’s voice was painfully soft. “Emma, we should… It’s getting late.”

Emma nodded shakily. “Yeah, okay.”

It was late, so late that Henry’s eyes were drooping despite the valiant battle he was waging against sleep.

“Kid,” Emma said, kneeling down to his eye level, “do you want to go back to the apartment or do you want to stay here tonight?”

At her side, Regina stiffened.

“Here,” Henry slurred.

Together, they watched him trudge up the stairs.

“I expect you to be ready for a workout tomorrow, Ms. Mills. I’m bringing my running shoes.”

“And Henry?”

“He can go with us. Exercise is good for kids, right?”

And whether or not that’s what Regina had meant, it was the answer Emma decided to leave her with.


	7. Chapter 7

“Where’s Henry?”

Emma cursed, fumbled and dropped her boots, and nearly slipped in her socked feet. “Jesus,” she said, putting one hand to her chest and the other on the wall to steady herself. “You scared me.”

Snow shook her head fondly and took a sip of the tea she was nursing, clearly still stuck in that phase of parental bliss where anything her daughter did was endearing. “You’re late,” she said, ignoring Emma’s outburst.

She’d already been a rebellious teenager once, and Emma didn’t feel like going through that particular phase again. “Why are you still up?” she asked, deflecting Snow’s unasked question and doing her very best not to meet her mother’s eyes.

“I couldn’t sleep.” Snow rotated the cup between her hands, the handle slowly spinning. It made a soft scratching sound against the counter that Emma found oddly soothing. “Where’s Henry?”

“He’s at Regina’s,” Emma said, hoping she sounded as casual about that as she intended. “He was wiped. I figured there was no need to drag him back here. He has a perfectly serviceable bedroom there. I’ll go get him tomorrow.”

Snow hadn’t been thrilled when Emma had started taking Henry to Regina’s for their dinners. She’d grumbled about it, mostly in a way that was just barely audible and clearly intended for Emma’s ears, and she’d asked Henry questions in a manner that was supposed to be subtle but was absolutely not. Emma had ignored it for the most part, because it was just better that way. No matter how disgruntled Snow might be about Regina’s involvement in Henry’s life, it was a done deal. She was his mom and she deserved access.

“Do you think that’s safe?”

“For him to sleep over?” Emma settled down into a chair across from Snow and took time to let her thoroughly unimpressed expression sink in. “With his mother? Yeah, I think it’s pretty safe.”

There were angry words on the tip of Snow’s tongue that Emma knew she didn’t want to hear, so she cut them off with a sigh. “It’s for the best for everybody if they spend more time together.”

Snow’s eyes narrowed, but she let it go for the moment, choosing to move on to another ripe topic. “And what about you?” Her hand tightened around the cup, knuckles going white. The movement and the scratching stopped, and the sudden absence of noise seemed to add to the moment’s weight. “Why do you have to spend so much time with her?”

Emma hadn’t exactly told her mother about what she was doing with Regina. It was police business, she’d say, when she headed out every night. An ongoing project, and Snow might have gotten more suspicious the longer this unnamed project seemed to drag on, but she hadn’t pushed it.

“I saw you the other day, at Henry’s soccer game. You looked…” Snow’s nostrils flared, “very cozy.”

“She could use a friend or two,” Emma said, trying not to flinch. Cozy was probably a better description than Snow knew, she thought, remembering the pressure of Regina against her side as they sat under the wide-open sky, fingers twined.

“I don’t see why that has to be you.”

She was too damned old for this. She wasn’t fifteen, trying to convince her parents that the bad girl she wanted to go out with wasn’t really as bad as the gossip made it seem. She hadn’t had parents at fifteen, and certainly no one who cared enough to pay attention to any mistakes she might be thinking about making. Not that this was a mistake, at least not the way that Snow would think it was if she had an inkling of what was going on in Emma’s mind. It was just as likely to fall apart as it was to move forward, and if Regina stayed true to form, she wouldn’t be doing anything that might actually help, but the kind of mistake it might be was a far gentler one than Snow would assume.

“Look, Regina and I have an understanding. You don’t have to like it, but surely you can see that it’s better to have her quiet and complacent than it is for her to be trapped up in that mansion all alone thinking about the ways she’s hurting. She’s trying to be better and I’m trying to help her out with that, and so far, it seems to be working. Or, maybe you prefer it when she’s unstable and homicidal?”

Snow glared at her distrustfully. “Regina’s very good at making it seem like everything’s fine,” she said, anger thick in her voice, “when really she’s just biding her time until she’s ready to strike. She can’t be rehabilitated, Emma. If we’re lucky, the best we can hope for is that we keep her contained.”

There were arguments that weren’t worth the effort, and Emma decided this was one of them. It wasn’t as if Snow didn’t have good reason not to trust Regina, but those good reasons were the same ones that would blind her to any efforts Regina made to change.

“Yeah, well, she’s been pretty contained so far, hasn’t she?” Emma pushed up on the counter and stood. Not that long ago, she’d been kissing Regina. The last thing she wanted to be doing in light of that was arguing about her admittedly many faults. “I’m headed to bed. Don’t worry about this, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

“You may think you do,” Snow said, expression fierce, “but you don’t know Regina the way I do.”

Emma was pretty sure Snow didn’t know Regina the way she did either, but she so wasn’t going to go there.

“If she goes rogue, you can be the first one to tell me that you told me so,” she said tiredly. “Until then, I’m choosing to take her at her word.”

Snow was a flock of last words just waiting to be loosed. Emma could see it, even as Snow’s lips tightened into a line and she nodded her good-night.

And, yeah, she had nearly three decades of being a disappointment to her parents to make up for, but if whatever this was with Regina actually moved forward, she’d probably run through her debit pretty quickly. Weighed up against that kiss, and the way Regina’s eyes had looked in the moonlight – vast and vulnerable… Well, she could handle a little parental disappointment.

******

It helped that Henry was starting to flag. He’d started their run with an excess of energy that exhausted Emma by proxy. Thrilled to be included in what he seemed to see as an adult activity, he’d been barely contained, bouncing on the balls of his feet and racing ahead of them only to double back to urge them forward. Regina had watched it all with an indulgent smile and yeah, Emma had to admit that it was kind of adorable, but she wasn’t used to childish energy.

“He’ll sleep well tonight,” Regina confided, her smile gentle. For an Evil Queen, she seemed to have boundless reserves of patience. Then again, maybe it was easier to be indulgent when time spent with her son was a precious, limited commodity. “I should have done this before now.”

Okay, maybe Emma could be indulgent too. After all, it wasn’t like she’d ever thought she’d have something like this – a weekend morning and a family jog through the countryside, like she was living in the pages of a Lands’ End catalogue. Of course, it was a picture already arranged, and she was just trying to sneak her way into it. Regina and Henry fit perfectly – for god’s sake, she’d found a pair of seersucker shorts mixed in with his things that he actually seemed to want to wear – but with Regina smiling beside her and Henry grinning up at them, she was beginning to think that maybe she did too.

******

This having a family thing was exhausting. She and Henry had stayed for lunch at Regina’s and then she’d taken him back to the apartment, where he might as well have been returning from backpacking across Australia for a year with the way Snow showered him with attention. She’d spent the afternoon doing crafts – and who knew the kid would be so into painting a birdhouse? It was apparently a lot more serious than she’d realized, because there was discussion of color choices and multiple coats and whether or not distressed was the right way to go. She’d slapped on the first color that’d caught her fancy, which she’d had to try to play off as a deliberate artistic choice once she realized the score. Put side-by-side with the others, she wouldn’t be mad at anyone who might have picked hers as the one done by an eleven year old boy.

And it was like Regina knew, just knew, that she wanted to whine about it; there was an anticipatory smirk on her face, and Emma tried to excuse the impulse away by thinking that maybe it would be some kind of humanitarian act, letting Regina get in a little self-affirming gloating time.

“Tired, dear?”

She was, and maybe that’s why it seemed like the kind of thing she should do, to throw her legs over an arm of the couch and settle her head into Regina’s lap. Regina’s shock alone made it worth it. She stiffened, hands hovering as if she couldn’t quite decide what to do with them, and looked at Emma with such befuddled confusion that it was hard to keep from laughing.

Regina didn’t know what to do with her? Good, Emma thought. She could stand to be the one who couldn’t quite find her footing for a little while.

Catching one of Regina’s still hovering hands in her own, she called up her magic. It was easy now, a slow twitch of Regina’s lips in her mind’s eye and the tap was open, and yeah, she was kind of proud of that.

“Do you want to go out on a date?”

It was maybe not as elegant of a proposal as she’d been planning, but the idea had been lodged in the back of Emma’s brain all day. She’d been pretty sure she wouldn’t manage to ask, no matter Regina’s apparent thaw where she was concerned. A relatively content Regina was still pretty damn intimidating.

Regina looked down at her with surprise. “Not especially, no. Why, Miss Swan? Would you like to take me out on one?”

And even though Emma had told herself that she was prepared for rejection, it turned out that she wasn’t. “No?” she echoed, the refusal lodging in her chest and radiating a sharp ache. “But I thought…”

“Thought what? That I would want to be squired about town? To have everyone look on as a Charming spawn tried to woo me?”

There’d been a kiss, Emma told herself. She hadn’t imagined it. A kiss that wasn’t a promise, granted, but a good kiss. A great kiss. One that had affected Regina as much as it had her.

She swung her legs down, pulling herself out of Regina’s lap and breaking their connection. “Christ, Regina,” she said, one hand rubbing her forehead. “It’s like Jekyll and meaner Jekyll with you sometimes.”

“I believe you’ll find that Mr. Hyde was the monster.”

“I know that,” Emma snapped defensively. “I’m trying to avoid the monster comparisons. I don’t even know why. It’s not like you do with your actual, you know, behavior.”

Regina sighed and looked at Emma like she was exercising the patience of a saint. “Is righteous indignation woven into your DNA or do you just have poor listening comprehension skills?”

“I don’t get what it is you think you said because what you actually said was no, only meaner.”

“What I said,” Regina said calmly, “is that I have no interest in going out on a date with you. Staying in, on the other hand…”

Emma blinked at her, unsure how to respond. She wondered, abstractly, if she’d gotten their Lifetime movie wrong. Maybe Regina wasn’t the unlikely, hard to root for protagonist. Maybe she was, and she was in the first act, the one where she ignored all of the warning signs clearly pointing to an inevitable bad ending and plowed headfirst into an ill-conceived relationship despite all of the red flags.

Or, maybe this wasn’t a Lifetime movie at all. Maybe it was Investigation Discovery, only it wasn’t yet clear which one of them was going to snap first.

“Maybe you got the wrong impression of what I’m looking for here,” she said, pleased to see that Regina’s expression had turned wary. “Am I interested in you? Yeah, but not in being a dirty secret and not if you can’t stop treating me like… like… like I don’t even know what, Regina, but the constant mocking has to stop.”

“Perhaps you’ve mistaken me for someone else. If you’re looking insipid, you might want to direct your attentions elsewhere. Our town therapist is single, I believe, and absolutely loves to sit around discussing feelings.”

“No, I know just who you are,” Emma said, running her hands up and down her thighs, “and this is you being deliberately difficult. So come on, just tell me. What are you scared of?”

The way Regina’s eyes narrowed at her put Emma in mind of getting struck by lightning by a very vengeful god, and what it must look like to the hapless mortal who had about one second to see it coming. And then, to her complete surprise, Regina looked away, something like shame in her eyes.

“I simply consider it easier,” she said, voice missing the waspish quality of only moments earlier, “to conduct my business in private, out of sight of those who might find reason to judge what I do.” She looked back at Emma, and the fleeting hint of vulnerability was gone, replaced by something decidedly cooler. “Or perhaps you’d like for your parents to know of your interest? And Henry? I’m sure they’ll be thrilled. Snow in particular, given how much she’s always supported and encouraged my continued happiness.”

And Emma heard all of that, but chose to ignore most of it. It wasn’t that Regina didn’t have a point. It was more that Emma preferred not to examine it too closely. “So what you’re saying is that I make you happy,” she said with a grin she knew was likely to infuriate Regina.

“Out of everything I said, that is the mistaken conclusion you draw?”

That she’d said it in that prissy way she had, the one Emma had come to see as a cross between irritated defensiveness and flirting – and really, with Regina, it wasn’t like it was uncommon for anything she did to serve cross-purposes – only made Emma’s grin widen.

“Why don’t you tell me about all of the ways I make you happy,” Emma said, impulsively catching Regina’s hand again. This time, she held her magic back. “I’ll take the top ten if the list is too long.”

Regina rolled her eyes in response.

“And I guess I’ll stay in with you,” Emma continued, “but if you ever call me spawn again, you’re going to have to think hard about ways to make it up to me.” She waited a moment for the inevitable Miss Swan or Sheriff Swan or whatever new name Regina might decide to call her, but Regina was suspiciously reserved.

Instead, she sighed. “You have a habit of making very bad decisions, Miss Swan. I hope you know this is one of them.”

Emma shrugged. “I’ve made worse. Give me a little time, and I’ll put this one to shame.”

It earned a smile, albeit a brief one. “I suppose you do deserve some reward for your rather clumsy persistence. If you’d move a bit closer?”

“The reward thing again? Regina, I thought we talked about that.”

Regina arched a brow in her direction. “Do you want to kiss me or not?”

Emma figured this was kind of what a quandary must feel like. Kiss Regina or make sure she really, truly did understand that this wasn’t the kind of thing she needed to feel beholden to do…

She scooted a little closer. And jesus, Regina was like some kind of freak of nature. One second Emma was sitting beside her and the next she was straddling her lap, and how had that even happened? Had Regina honest to god picked her up? Maybe she was some kind of, like, judo master or something, and, oh yeah, straddling her lap. That was the key outcome. Thighs on either side of Regina’s and their hips pressed together and, holy shit, those were Regina’s hands on her ass. Her son’s mother had her hands on Emma’s ass, and was really kind of possessive about it, and no… she could not be thinking about Henry at a time like this. The kiss the night before had been so incredibly sweet, but now Regina was looking at her like she’d made up a list of her favorite methods of princess defilement and was trying to decide where to start first, and Emma wasn’t sure whether she should be nervous or fucking thrilled about it.

“Perhaps you need further invitation?” Regina prompted, tightening her grip, and fuck it. Emma could play this game too.

She slid her arms over Regina’s shoulders and wrapped them around her neck. Wriggling even closer, she leaned down and brushed her lips over Regina’s, keeping the contact light and brief. Over and over, each kiss as fleeting as the one before, she slowly escalated, throwing in a nip of her teeth or the brush of her tongue. She dipped her fingers beneath the collar of Regina’s blouse, scratched lightly with her nails, and rolled her hips so subtly that it might almost have been innocent.

When Regina chuckled, the sound low, deep, and throaty, Emma took it as a provocation.

So maybe, she admitted later, things got a little out of control after that. Maybe she ended up with Regina’s teeth teasing along her collarbone with enough bite to sting, with one of Regina’s hands buried in her hair and pulling hard and the other under Emma’s shirt and against the bare skin of her breast. And maybe she was using her grip on Regina’s neck as an anchor to rock her hips shamelessly against Regina’s, the sounds she was making subjectively quite wanton, but… 

But, yeah.

“Are we seriously going to do this here on your couch?” Emma asked through a gasp as Regina licked her way up Emma’s neck to her ear and bit down hard.

Regina’s fingers found her nipple and twisted – and okay, one sweet anomaly aside, Regina seemed to have one setting and it was kind of rough, but Emma was actually fine with that– and grinned up at her. “Objections, dear?”

“I don’t know?” Emma replied, genuinely not sure. “Is this maybe a little fast?”

“Am I throwing off the timeline of your planned courtship?”

“No, but… I don’t know. Last night you were telling me you couldn’t make any promises, and tonight you seem down for all kinds of debauchery.” Emma shrugged. “I’m not going to pretend like I’m any kind of prude about this kind of thing, but the quick move from one end of the spectrum to the other has me a little worried. Are we going to be back on the other side tomorrow, and what happens if you decide we’ve moved too fast?”

Regina smirked. “Worried about my tender feelings?”

Emma sat back against Regina’s thighs and stared at her for a moment. She was Regina, with the mocking curve of her lips and the flawless mask, but then there were her eyes and the hint, barely visible, that maybe she wasn’t as confident as she seemed. “Well, yeah. I guess I am.”

Regina’s expression hardened. “Do you fret over the fate of dinosaurs also?” At Emma’s look of complete bafflement, she sighed. “Things long extinct.”

What was it Emma’s subconscious had been saying? Oh, yeah – that this was probably a bad idea. Regina was the mold from which all closed off bad girls with difficulty with emotional intimacy had been struck. Give her a leather jacket and a motorcycle, and hell, the universe would probably knock Emma up just for being stupid enough to fall ever so willingly into that particular trap. Only, even if she was that, she was also scared and hopeful, strong enough to try to be better, brittle enough to fail spectacularly, and guarded enough to pretend she couldn’t be hurt.

“I want you,” Emma said, sliding her hands down Regina’s arms until their fingers were once again entwined. “I really, really want you. Tell me you’re ready for this, and I’ll believe you. But, tell me you’re not, and we’ll wait.”

“Novel,” Regina said, eyes hard and with the tone of voice Emma had learned delivered important truths under a shield of sharp sarcasm, “for someone of your bloodline to present me with a choice.”

And that? Well, shit.

******

She hadn’t really known Kathryn outside of the whole murder investigation and covering up possible infidelity thing, but she’d seemed okay. As far as Emma knew, she’d been Regina’s friend before the curse broke, and according to Henry, she’d been a princess. Charming had been supposed to marry her only she loved a knight that’d been turned into a statue or something and Charming had loved Snow, which was kind of like a love triangle except for how it was really just a set of love parallel lines. In the end, it’ll all worked out the way things did for Good – Henry’s words – which had left Emma wondering just what about that story painted anyone as good, evil, or in between. Okay, somebody got turned into a statue, so there had to be some kind of bad guy in there somewhere, but other than that? Jane Austen could have written about that shit. Maybe. Emma never really had read much Jane Austen, but she’d heard there was lots of pining.

“Thanks for coming down,” Emma said, shifting awkwardly in her seat.

Kathryn – no, Abigail – looked around the interrogation room calmly and nodded. “How can I be of assistance, Sheriff? Is this about James?”

Emma was on the verge of asking who James was before she remembered. Her dad. Right.

“No,” she said, tapping the end of a pen against the table and trying to keep her knee from jiggling. “Not that. I was hoping you could maybe fill in some blanks for me.”

“About the murder investigation?”

Again, Emma caught herself before she asked the question. Right, Kathryn’s murder investigation. Into her not murder.

“About the old world.” Emma shifted again, growing increasingly uncomfortable. “You were a princess, right?”

Again, Abigail nodded.

“And you were going to have to get married, right? For the good of the kingdom or whatever?”

If Abigail hadn’t been looking at her with such benign, gentle curiosity, Emma would have winced.

“That was the general expectation,” she agreed. “In fact, for a time, I was betrothed to your father.”

“But you didn’t want to marry him.”

Abigail colored slightly. “I…”

Emma waved the question away. “We don’t need to get into specifics. The take-home is that you would have been expected to marry someone you really didn’t know because of some kind of political reason, right? I’m just trying to get a feel for how things were over there.”

Abigail’s expression was a little more wary, but she nodded. “I was subject to my father’s decision in the matter.”

“So you could have been married to someone you didn’t even know?” Abigail nodded. “To someone you didn’t even like?” Another nod.

Emma sighed.

“It was a different world, obviously,” Abigail said softly. “Here, I have the luxury of marrying for love, which is a wonderful thing. There, for me, marriage would have been about the advantage it brought for my family and our vassals. Marriage would have been used to secure a border, bring together warring kingdoms, attain wealth, or reward a faithful and important supporter. Love alone would have done none of those things.” Abigail’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Have James and Snow been pursuing something on your behalf?”

Emma laughed. “For me?” She tried to picture Snow and Charming matchmaking with political maneuvering in mind, and couldn’t at all. “No. Not that I know of.”

“Is there something else happening?” Abigail’s expression darkened. “Have you heard rumors that some of the others are considering a return to our old ways?”

At that, Emma sobered. “No,” she admitted, her pen once again taking up its nervous tapping. “This is… it isn’t really police business.”

“Personal?”

Embarrassingly, Emma felt her cheeks flush. It seemed to assuage Abigail’s unease, but did nothing for her own.

“So say your father had decided that you were going to marry someone,” she said, pressing forward, “that you didn’t know.”

Abigail considered it thoughtfully. “I would have come to know him. After all, once we had been married, I would have had the rest of my life to devote to it.”

Emma couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t seem especially thrilled at the hypothetical.

“And if you didn’t like him?”

“In this world, I’d divorce him. In the old world, well… if I was lucky, he would at least be kind. Hopefully he would have allowed me the freedom to pursue my own interests, assuming they were suitably ladylike, and perhaps after I’d given him a suitable number of children, I could have convinced him to seek more intimate companionship elsewhere. Of course, had I married a king… Well, kings are quite used to getting their way.”

“And if your way and his way weren’t going in the same direction?” Emma swallowed hard.

Abigail’s expression softened. “I think you know the answer to that. There, certain things were expected of a wife, and the expectation that a woman would enjoy marital relations with her husband… I won’t paint all men with the same brush, but it was a different place. Such things weren’t prioritized, or often even considered. If there was love, that was one thing, I suppose. If there wasn’t? Well, such was life.”

She’d known it. She hadn’t needed it verified, but then again, hearing it reinforced what she’d suspected. What she’d do with the information, she didn’t know.

“You know neither your mother nor your father…” Abigail began gently.

“Yeah,” Emma said, head in her hands, “I know.”

“And your grandfather loved your grandmother very much. Their love was renown throughout the kingdoms.”

She started to get a little nauseous. “Thanks,” she muttered, looking up and giving Abigail a tight smile. “You’ve been really helpful.”

Abigail hesitated. “I know we were never close, Sheriff, but you seem like a good person caught in the middle of a very difficult situation. I’m happy to help you in any way I can. If you have more questions, maybe it would be easier to discuss them over a glass of wine.” She smiled mischievously. “It would be nice, too, to have more friends. I never really had the chance before. Father’s condition tended to severely limit my pool of potential playmates.”

Emma made a note to ask Henry why later.

“Weren’t you friends with Regina?” she asked, trying for nonchalant. “Have you seen her lately?”

Abigail’s expression darkened. “I thought, briefly, that we were friends, but that was as much of a lie as everything else.”

This time, when Emma squirmed, it was anxiety over offering an olive branch on behalf of someone who might be horrified by the presumption. “Maybe you should stop by and see her sometime. She’s all alone up at the mansion most of the time. She’s probably pretty lonely. A friend might help.” If Abigail’s expression turned shrewd, Emma ignored it. “Or whatever. I don’t… Just do whatever you want.” If it shifted into amused, she ignored that also. “Thanks for coming by to help.”

It darkened again, though this time, with the kind of sympathy Emma knew would drive Regina to violence.

******

When Emma showed up that night with Henry in tow, Regina was back to all black.

“Hi, Mom,” Henry said, giving her a quick hug before skittering past her and heading for his Xbox.

“Miss Swan,” Regina said, while Emma stood with her hands shoved deep in her pockets, smiling sheepishly. It wasn’t that she’d run out the night before with her tail between her legs, but she had, perhaps, made a less than graceful exit. Not that that was anything new, necessarily, but made significantly more awkward by the state of her underwear.

“Hey, Regina.” She almost asked if she could come in, but the look in Regina’s eyes promised excoriation if she even dared revert to formalities. “Smells delicious.”

“Honestly, Sheriff, if I’d known you were going to be such a delicate flower…” she broke off with a sigh.

Emma scowled because, really, was that something she was supposed to have been able to handle with grace and ease? “What do you want from me?” she hissed, making sure her voice was low enough that Henry wouldn’t be able to hear. “I’m trying to be sensitive or respectful or, I don’t know, not an asshole.”

Oddly enough, Regina seemed satisfied with her response. If not an asshole was the bar she had to meet, maybe she wouldn’t screw things up as badly as usual after all. “Look,” Emma continued, “I like it when you tell me things about your life, good or bad. Henry’s book tells part of the story, I guess, but I don’t want to learn your story from that stupid book. I want to learn it from you, and if the things you tell me are painful, then thanks, I guess, for trusting me with them.”

She looked up at Regina with her shoulders hunched, expecting to be told just how wrong she was, but Regina simply nodded. “I imagine I’m not the only one with a story,” Regina said somewhat stiffly, “and I am not averse to hearing yours.”

For a moment, Emma forgot to breathe.

Regina, eyes inscrutable, added, “But only when you’re ready.”

They were on dessert before Emma was able to breathe normally again, but on the up-side, she hadn’t run.

******

Regina’s hand in hers was disturbingly comforting. It was becoming an essential part of her routine, something she needed to bring the day to a close.

“I almost don’t even want to make the suggestion,” she said, good enough now with her control that the words were only slightly airy, “because, knowing you, you’ll think it was because of what happened last night.”

The five seconds Regina waited for her to continue was a remarkable display of patience.

“Are you planning on keeping me in suspense all night?”

Emma blinked. Okay, maybe her control wasn’t entirely fool proof. “Oh, yeah, so I was thinking that maybe Henry should start staying over some nights. When I bring him over for dinner, he could just stay, and if he had school the next day, you could drop him off, right? He has soccer practice sometimes so you’d need to make sure he had his cleats and his shin guards, but if I can remember, I know you can. I can get you a schedule. Some of the parents go to soccer practice, but, I don’t know. The kid needs to have some things to himself, right? It feels like that’s part of growing up, having to be responsible enough to make it through soccer practice without having someone watching over you.”

“Perhaps the parents observe soccer practice because they enjoy it,” Regina said, voice oddly quiet. “Just because they’re present, it doesn’t mean they don’t trust their children to be able to continue on without them.”

And, oh, Emma thought, wincing. Soccer practice was probably the kind of thing Regina would want to attend, and she should know about it anyway. “Shit, Regina,” Emma said, head dropping back to rest on the back of the couch. “I didn’t even think about it. I’ll figure out what the schedule is and I’ll write it down for you. This is… I’m not good at this kind of thing. How am I supposed to know if that’s the kind of thing a parent would want to do?”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she tensed. She’d walked right into that one; the biting commentary on her lack of parenting skills was pretty much inevitable with that kind of opening. She wondered in what flavor it would come. That’s because you’re not a parent, Miss Swan. Or, if Regina was feeling particularly feisty: The abandonment of your children does seem to be a family trait, Sheriff. She’d even deserve it, because she should have known that parents did those kinds of things, that they went to soccer practices or, hell, even just knew the schedule without having to hunt it down.

“You make the mistake, Miss Swan,” Regina began, and Emma braced herself, “of thinking there is a single correct way to be a good parent.”

Emma cracked open an eye. Regina was sitting as primly as ever, staring into the unlit fireplace.

A minute passed in silence. “Okay, then,” Emma said, not entirely certain how to interpret Regina’s mood. “So Henry will start staying here more. I can still stay for dinner though, right?” She shrugged, fumbled. “I like the dinner part.”

Regina’s expression didn’t change. “I always thought that when it was my turn, I would be better.” Regina turned toward her, the look in her eyes distant. “My mother was a difficult woman, and when I displeased her… well. I thought, if I ever had a child, that child would love me, not fear me. That child would be a happy child, with choices and the ability to direct his or her own life without interference. Well,” she smiled sadly and shrugged, “without undue interference.”

Driven by what she was almost sure was insanity, Emma slid her arm around Regina’s shoulders and pulled her close. When Regina softened against her, incrementally at first and then with something like relief, Emma tightened her grip. Regina’s head fell to her shoulder, hair hiding her eyes, and Emma felt a rush of complicated emotions flood her chest. This stupid town and the stupid people in it, turning her into a sap.

“It’s one of my more painful failures,” Regina said, voice soft.

“Now you’re the one making mistakes. Just because something took a little bit of damage, it doesn’t mean it’s broken.”

Regina sighed. “You could bottle your magic and sell it as truth serum. It certainly prompts me to share things I’d rather keep to myself.”

And Emma might have believed that if she hadn’t spotted the lie. Emma wanted to believe that it wasn’t because it was her magic that brought out this side of Regina. She wanted to believe it was her.


	8. Chapter 8

She should have known that Regina was the kind of mom who would insist on getting to the field an hour early to make sure they’d get the best seats, but she honestly hadn’t even considered it.

“It’s not like there’s a nose-bleed section,” Emma grumbled, shifting in the admittedly comfortable camp chair Regina had procured for her. “There’ll be 50 people here, tops.”

Regina continued to ignore her, just like she had for the last five minutes, watching Henry putter around with a soccer ball like it was Nureyev’s last performance. On the far end of the field, Fredrick was meticulously painting lines in front of the goal, and Emma was bored. Seriously, seriously bored.

“So I’ve been thinking about our date,” she said, rubbing a finger along one of Regina’s.

Regina’s head snapped around with such violence that Emma was surprised she hadn’t heard a crack.

“Be quiet,” Regina snapped, pulling her hand away.

“What? You think a blade of grass is going to overhear?”

“I don’t know, dear. Perhaps your mother has started communing with the plant life in a quest to find something at her intellectual level.”

Emma chose to ignore the gibe, primarily because the way Regina had said dear had sounded almost affectionate, for once. Almost.

“What do you want to do?” she asked, ignoring the way Regina’s eyes were still narrowed at her. “I have some ideas, but if you already have something planned, I don’t want to get in the way.”

“Why would I have something planned?” Regina asked sharply, and Emma felt her frustration rise. “You’re the one who asked.”

And, okay, point. “Fine,” Emma said, recapturing Regina’s hand for a moment. “Tomorrow night.”

******

Emma clutched the picnic basket tighter and sent a silent thank you in Google’s direction.

“Miss Swan,” Regina said, opening the door in response to Emma’s knock with the kind of formality that Emma hadn’t had to endure in quite some time. “Should I be on the lookout for a big bad wolf?”

Emma shifted from foot to foot and tried not to look as nervous as she felt. “Nice to see you too. Are you going to let me in?”

Regina gave the door a push, letting it swing wide. On a date, she was a long black and white striped cardigan over a black shirt, with pants that managed to skew a hair into nightlife over workplace.

“You look gorgeous, as always,” Emma said, trying not to stumble over the words. It felt artificial, somehow, after everything that had gone between them. They weren’t a shy first date and the desperate need to do everything just right if there was any hope of a second, and history had put too much between them to try and make it fit.

Regina observed her coolly. “This isn’t necessary, you know,” she said. “I don’t require romance.”

Emma took a deep breath. “Yeah? Well maybe I do, so play along for a little while and let me do this.”

She could have done without Regina’s mocking half-bow.

“Stay here,” she said, shifting her grip on the basket yet again. “I’ll come get you when it’s ready.”

The idea had been mostly hers, even if the execution had received a significant assist from the internet. Pulling together the ingredients had taken longer than she’d expected, but most of them were on loan. Ruby had given her the picnic basket with narrowed eyes and a, “Not a word, okay?” Snow, nee Mary Margaret, had enough blankets to open her own emergency shelter, though in retrospect, Emma was regretting her hasty choice. Regina didn’t really seem like the type to be charmed by repeating rows of kissing bunnies, unless she had an extremely well hidden fondness for whimsy, but Emma was forced to go with what she had. The internet had told her that paper plates and plastic silverware were a must, but she’d known better. Regina wasn’t likely to settle for less than the real deal, and so Emma had snuck the plates and utensils, almost sure that Snow wouldn’t notice their absence.

Citronella candles, a bottle of wine and a corkscrew, and all that was left was the food. Again, she figured the guidance of strangers had to be better than anything she could come up with, and so the basket was filled with cheeses and bread, with quiche and pasta salad, and strawberries with clotted cream. It was pretty fucking amazing, all told, even if she wasn’t really all that skilled at artfully arranging candles and laying out silverware.

“You can come out now,” Emma said, her voice echoing down the hallway to where Regina was standing, waiting with one hip cocked and an expression on her face that said that she was determined not to be impressed. “Come on. Join our date.”

Twilight was firmly ensconced, with the navy of the night sky crowding out all but the slimmest sliver of waning, golden sunshine. A trio of fireflies blinked without rhythm, and yeah, as far as first dates went, she was hitting it out of the park.

“You intend for us to eat on the ground?” Regina asked, breaking through Emma’s shell of self-satisfaction.

“It’s a picnic,” she said, trying not to sound affronted. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been on a picnic.”

Regina stiffened but didn’t answer, and Emma decided she wasn’t even going to try to interpret that particular silence. Instead, she took Regina’s hand and pulled her out into the night, easily breaking through a hesitating moment of resistance.

“It’s a night time picnic,” Emma stressed, guiding Regina to the picnic blanket she’d spread across the ground under Regina’s slightly mangled apple tree. “Relax. Drink some wine.”

Regina took the proffered tumbler but didn’t look especially happy about it.

“Please, Regina,” Emma said tiredly. In the few minutes it had taken to fetch Regina, twilight had given way to night and the fireflies had disappeared. Above them, a waxing moon appeared over the topmost branches of the apple tree. “Nobody’s here to see you. Give it a try, okay?”

Regina set the tumbler of wine aside and turned to face her, expression unreadable. “I don’t know why you insist on observing these useless rituals,” she said, leaning forward until Emma felt compelled to lean back. Then Regina was straddling her hips, shrugging her cardigan off and tossing it out of the way. “I believe I’ve already made quite clear that I’m willing to engage in a more intimate relationship with you. You don’t need wine and candles to lure me into bed, Miss Swan.”

Emma pushed up on her elbows and scowled. She couldn’t read Regina, who seemed to swing from apparently rational to bafflingly irrational with dazzling rapidity. She’d been reluctant and then almost sweet, and just when Emma had felt like the ground was growing a little bit more stable under her feet, Regina had changed again. The way she’d kissed Emma on the couch, the way she was looking at her now, eyes black as pitch and wicked as sin – she couldn’t make it fit with the woman who’d sat on her back porch under the wide open sky, kissed Emma so softly, and refused to make promises. With the woman who talked about family night and sat next to her at Henry’s soccer games.

“Is that all you want?” Emma asked. “Is that all you want from me?”

“All?” Regina cocked her head, lips curled up in a sneer. “Do you find me somehow insufficient?”

Emma pushed back, slipping away from beneath Regina. She braced her hand against the tree and stood, looking at the plates and the food, at the candles flickering in the soft night breeze, and sighed.

“Once upon a time,” Emma said, the irony of her words echoing hollowly in her chest, “I would have jumped at what you’re offering, but that’s not me anymore. For maybe the first time in my life, I know what it’s like to have people care about me and want to know me with no strings attached. I have people who want to be in my life because they like me. For the first time, I guess I feel like I’m worth having those kind of people in my life, and this… this is just going to drag me back down. If this is all you can manage to offer, I’m going to have to say no thanks.” She straightened and took in a deep breath, as if steeling her resolve, and nodded. “I’ll be back to pick these things up later. Have a good night, Regina.”

As the night sky darkened to pitch black, she walked away.

******

Ruby slid onto the barstool to Emma’s left, eyebrow raised at the line of upturned glasses in front of her.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked, signaling the bartender.

Emma stared down at the nearly empty glass in front of her. “No.”

“Okay.” Ruby accepted her drink and took a sip. “Want to talk about something else?”

Emma laid her head on the bar and wrapped an arm around it.

“I couldn’t do this in the other world,” Ruby said, as if she hadn’t noticed. “It’s not really a good idea to get drunk when, well, you know. When you can turn into a homicidal wolf.”

“I thought that was only at the full moon or whatever,” Emma said, her voice muffled.

“The full moon was a certainty, but the wolf was always there. It could be provoked, or I could reach for it intentionally.” She laughed bitterly. “If you think the bar fights you’ve had to break up were bad, Sheriff, just be glad none of them involved a drunken, angry werewolf.”

“So you don’t miss it? The other land?”

“I… not really. I lived in a cabin in the woods with my grandmother in constant fear of a man-eating wolf that turned out to be me. I did horrible things I didn’t even know I was doing. Things I had no control over. And, I wasn’t even the only monster in the forest.” She put her empty glass on the bar and signaled the bartender for another. “No, I don’t miss it.”

“Did you know Regina over there?” Emma asked before she could stop herself.

“In a way. She wasn’t exactly very knowable.”

Emma could drink to that, and did.

Ruby nudged her shoulder gently. “Sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

“I thought I’d found something,” Emma said, turning her glass down on the bar and looking up at the bartender for another, “but I hadn’t.”

The bartender didn’t respond, so Emma pushed herself up and tried again.

“Holy shit,” Ruby murmured beside her, reaching out blindly to grasp Emma’s shoulder in a weak attempt to turn her around. “Uh, Emma…”

The next hand to grasp her shoulder wasn’t anywhere near as gentle.

“How dare you,” Regina said, voice low and dangerous. She was up in Emma’s face and it was classic Regina. She was there to impose her will, and Emma didn’t have the energy for it.

After a moment of staring into Regina’s eyes, she sagged back and turned to Ruby. “Can you take me home?” she asked her, trying not to be amused by the way she’d caught Ruby trying to stealthily sneak away.

Ruby looked from Regina’s furious expression to Emma and back again, frozen.

“I will drive you home,” Regina snapped. She pulled open her purse, slapped a fifty dollar bill down onto the bar, and wrapped her fist into the front of Emma’s shirt.

Emma would have protested, but she was too busy trying not to trip over her own feet.

The cool of the night air didn’t bring about sobriety, but it did bring her out of the stunned silence she’d fallen into at Regina’s appearance. “What the hell?” she asked, disentangling Regina’s grasp on her shirt.

“Of course you’re drunk,” Regina said, and Emma felt the cold sting of metal against her back. The Benz, she noted dully. “Of course you ran away from something you couldn’t handle and tried to dull the shame of your cowardice with liquor.”

“My cowardice?” Emma’s voice rose sharply. “My cowardice?”

“Disgraceful,” Regina spat.

“You…” Emma started, then began to laugh. “You’re unbelievable. Then again, why would I expect you to understand? You’d have to function like an actual human being first.”

Regina took a step closer to her, trapping her against the Benz, and even through her intoxication, Emma could feel the swell of Regina’s restrained magic. “Don’t come to the house again,” Regina hissed, eyes flashing. “I’ll expect Henry on his usual schedule. If you dare to take him away from me because of this, I’ll… I’ll…”

Suddenly exhausted, Emma slumped back against the car. “I wouldn’t do that,” she said, running her hand over her face. “You can’t give me what I need but that’s just, I don’t know, that’s just who you are, I guess. I’m not going to punish you for it.”

“Can’t give you…” Regina trailed off, jaw clenched tightly. “I offered you… You rejected me, Miss Swan. Don’t lay this on my door.”

The dark suited Regina, Emma thought. As beautiful as she was in the light, she was even more beautiful in shadows. “I expected too much,” she said, reaching up to brush a lock of hair behind Regina’s ear, “and I screwed it all up. You tried to tell me, I think. I imagined things you didn’t want to give, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

“Miss Swan…”

Emma smiled sadly and ran a thumb across Regina’s cheek. She leaned forward, brushed the same square of skin with her lips, and pulled back. “I’ll still come by if you need me.”

“No,” Regina said simply, eyes shining. “No. You don’t get to decide unilaterally that I am unfit. You don’t get to decide that I’m not worthy.”

Behind them, the door to the Rabbit Hole slammed open and shut. Emma shivered with a sudden chill.

“I thought maybe you could fall in love with me,” Emma said, looking away, “the way I was falling in love with you. But you don’t… you don’t want that, and it’s not good for either of us to get in this any deeper.”

Regina’s fingers were hard against her chin. Her lips against Emma’s were just as hard. When she pulled away, her lipstick was smeared and Emma couldn’t mistake the brightness of her eyes for anything other than tears. “You shouldn’t presume to know what I want,” she said, her voice cold. “You seem to think it should be as easy for me as it is for you.”

“Easy?” Emma laughed dully. “I could have let it be easy, Regina. I could have fucked you. That’s all you wanted, right? I could have done that and it would have been good for a little while. It wouldn’t have been enough, but it would have been good. The thing is, I’m tired of easy and good. I want more than that, so when I finally got it through my thick skull that that’s all you wanted, I saved us both the trouble of you having to find some way to get rid of me later.”

Regina’s face was infuriatingly unreadable.

“Get in the car, Miss Swan,” she said finally, tiredly, and took a step back. “I’ll drive you home.”

Emma couldn’t face the thought of the silent, tense car ride. “I’ll walk,” she said, pushing away from the car. “Or maybe Ruby’s still here. She can take me.”

Regina’s hands clenched into fists. “Get in the car.”

“Regina…”

“Please.” If Emma hadn’t heard the crack in Regina’s voice, she would have fought it. She would have started walked and to hell with Regina’s demands.

A few minutes later, the car was idling in front of her apartment. She gave Regina a tight smile and reached for the door handle, desperate to go to bed and make this night finally reach its end.

“Miss Swan,” Regina said softly, eyes focused on the road in front of her.

“What?”

“It was a beautiful picnic. Thank you.”

Emma stared back at her, unable to speak.

Regina took a hitched breath. “And thank you for trying.”

Emma stood shivering on the sidewalk, watching the Benz’s tail lights shrink until they disappeared around a corner. The town was quiet, lights off and sidewalks empty. It matched her mood so perfectly that she sat, propped up against the brick of her building, until the cold drove her inside.

******

“So,” Ruby said, sliding a hot chocolate onto the counter in front of Emma. Her raised brow finished the sentence for her, and Emma sighed, head hanging down.

“Could we not talk about this?”

She’d woken up to a hangover and a suspicious look from Snow that seemed to crawl deep inside of her and tug violently at all the things she’d been keeping secret. It was either small town gossip or mother’s intuition, and Emma didn’t know which would be worse.

“You mean about the way Regina Mills tracked you down and pulled you out of the bar last night like you’d been a bad girl and she was there to mete out some punishment?”

The clearly over-imaginative interpretation of events made Emma grimace. “Please don’t ever say anything like that ever again.”

Ruby rolled her eyes and leaned forward, arms propped on the counter and close enough that her voice, thankfully, was a conspiratorial whisper. “When were you going to tell me about you and Regina?”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“No? Because I followed you out to make sure that you were okay, and the way she was kissing you didn’t look like nothing.”

It had been beyond reckless by Regina’s standards, doing something like that so publicly.

“Did anyone else see?”

Ruby shrugged. “If you were worried about getting caught, maybe the two of you shouldn’t have been making out in a parking lot.”

“We weren’t…” Emma sighed, frustrated. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s not what you think, okay.”

Ruby looked resolutely unconvinced. “Oh, okay. So the two of you didn’t, like, break up or anything like that. That whole thing – a pissed off Regina dragging you out of the bar, the two of you getting frisky in plain sight – that can all be interpreted as nothing happening between the two of you?”

The hot chocolate, as delicious as it was, wasn’t worth the questions that came with it.

“I guess it can,” Emma said and stood. She snagged her jacket from the seat of the chair beside her and shrugged into it, avoiding Ruby’s skeptical gaze. “And I would appreciate it if you kept your speculations to yourself.”

“Emma,” Ruby’s voice was soft, as were her eyes, “if you change your mind about talking, I’m here. That’s one of the best parts of being a friend, getting to take your side when things go wrong.”

After a long moment, Emma nodded shortly. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

******

“You’re not coming?”

Looking at Henry, with his big, hopeful eyes, was nothing short of painful. He had the car door open and one foot on the ground, one hand wrapped tightly around the handle of his overnight bag, and she wanted him to keep moving. She wanted him to slam the car door cheerfully and race up the path, waving good-bye just before he slipped inside. She wanted to imagine him running into Regina’s arms and allowing her a hug, just a small one but enough for Regina to smile that big, happy smile she got, and that was all. She didn’t want to think about a table with only two plates or of Regina, alone in her study afterward because Henry was upstairs or off playing his video games. Even more than that, she didn’t want to think about the rest of her night: a perfectly fine meal with Snow and Charming, a couple of hours to fill before she could go to bed, a night spent tossing and turning.

“Not tonight,” she said, and tried to smile. She tried to make it no big deal, like it was okay and normal and nothing to be concerned about. Henry was a worrier, even more so now that he’d had one big worry proven devastatingly true, and she didn’t want to see him become that kid again, the one with the pinched mouth and the furrowed brow and tension in his shoulders he couldn’t shake. “Go on. Your mom’s waiting on you.”

He hesitated, unsure, and she tried harder with her smile. Weren’t teenaged boys supposed to be self-centered and insensitive? And the people who believed Regina wasn’t cut out to be a mother – what the hell kind of Evil Queen raised a little boy with so much fucking empathy?

“She’ll be mad. The last time you didn’t come, I could tell it bothered her. She likes having you there.”

Emma tried not to let his innocent words cut into her and failed.

“We’ve already talked about it. She knows I have to be somewhere else tonight.” Her smile on the verge of faltering, she shooed him in the direction of the walk. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, kid. Be good, okay?”

One last, questioning look and finally he was out of the car, and it wasn’t that she wanted to see him walking away from her, but she couldn’t take another moment of that look and Regina’s house in the background and the feeling that she’d had something amazing in her grasp and lost it.

******

Snow and Charming actually looked startled when she reappeared after dropping Henry off at Regina’s, halfway through a dinner they clearly hadn’t anticipated her attending.

“Emma.” Snow, always quicker to react than Charming, was smiling and reaching for an extra plate before Emma could even trudge over to the table. She sat to roast beef and mashed potatoes before the look of confusion completely cleared Charming’s eyes, and not for the first time, she allowed that when it came to genetics, she probably fell pretty hard from his side of the family tree. “We didn’t know you’d be joining us. We thought you’d be at Regina’s. It is her night, isn’t it?”

Emma tried another unconvincing smile, scooped up a forkful of potatoes, and said, “This is delicious. Really great.”

When the positions flipped, and Snow’s expression turned to confusion and Charming’s cleared, it was completely disconcerting. “Did you want to talk about it, honey?” he asked, eyes soft and dripping concern, and it was almost worth the way his concern lanced into her to see Snow glancing back and forth between them in incomprehension.

“What happened?” Snow asked, the kind of alarm in her voice that indicated that calls for back-up and bows and arrows would be her next line of action.

Charming put a soothing hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Did the two of you have a fight?”

Emma had already been a teenager once, and didn’t appreciate feeling like she was one again. “Nothing’s wrong,” she said, switching to the roast beef. “Did I interrupt something? Did you guys think you’d have the apartment to yourselves? I can head out. It’s no problem.”

Her attempt to refocus the conversation stumbled and crashed.

“Did the two of who have a fight?” Snow asked Charming sharply, clearly starting to pick up on the fact that she was missing something important.

“Regina and Emma.”

“Why wouldn’t they have a fight? They’ve been fighting since Emma came to Storybrooke.”

Charming shrugged. “But they don’t fight anymore. They’re friends now.”

Emma couldn’t tell if her mother wanted to punch something or to cry. It was clear that she’d repressed their entire conversation from a few weeks prior, where Emma had already covered this same ground with her. She was friends with Regina. This wasn’t news.

“No,” Snow said, hand clenched into a fist and honest-to-god tears welling in her eyes, and so maybe her mom was a little more upset by the prospect than she’d let on which, guess she’d dodged a bullet there. If this was how Snow reacted when she thought that Emma and Regina were friends, Emma would have hated to have seen how she’d reacted to the news that they were something more.

When Snow banged her fist into the table hard enough to cause silverware to rattle, both Emma and Charming jumped. “No. You’re my baby and she’s… No, I won’t have it.”

“Snow,” Charming said soothingly.

But Snow, who was quickly building toward hysterical, seemed not to notice. “I decided it would pass. I knew if I tried to stop it, I’d only make things worse, but this has gone far enough.”

Emma swallowed hard and hunched her shoulders, something telling her that maybe Snow wasn’t as clueless as she appeared after all.

Not that the same applied to Charming. “Tried to stop what?”

Snow glared at him. “Emma and Regina!”

“From being friends?”

Emma wondered if it would be possible to slink away from the table without her parents’ noticing, but Snow’s eyes cut to her sharply as she began to push her chair back from the table.

“They’re not friends,” she said, frustration and anger making her voice harsh. “Friends don’t look at each other the way they do. Friends don’t…” Her eyes narrowed and her lips flattened into a line, and if Regina had been there, Emma knew she’d be pulling Snow off of her. “They’re not friends. They’re in love.”

Charming’s expression of confusion broke and he laughed. He laughed so hard he nearly tipped back in his chair, and Emma couldn’t help feeling a wee bit disgruntled.

“No they’re not,” he said finally, smiling fondly at Snow.

Snow, uncharmed, glared at him. “I know what Regina looks like when she’s in love, and Emma’s not exactly subtle.”

Emma felt her stomach clench hard, a combination of fear of disappointing her newly discovered parents and disappointment of her own. Whatever Regina felt wasn’t love, no matter how resolute Snow seemed to be.

“No,” Charming said, and actually sounded aghast.

Palms dropping flat to the table in defeat, Emma echoed him. “He’s right,” she said tiredly. “Regina doesn’t love me.”

It was apparently enough to deflate Snow, who slipped back into her chair and stared forlornly at the table.

Charming looked between Snow and Emma, from dejection of one sort to dejection of another. “Well, that’s good, right?” From Emma to Snow and back again. “Right? No? Not good?”

With building horror, Emma felt her chest tightening and the burn of tears in her eyes.

“Oh,” Charming said softly, and maybe this was why Snow loved him so much. Maybe it was the way he leaned over, his hand covering Emma’s, and nothing but love radiating out of him. “Well, why wouldn’t she?”

Emma couldn’t even find it within herself to smile when Snow slapped him firmly on the arm.

“No, really,” he said, absently rubbing his arm. “Why wouldn’t she? You thought she did, Snow, and you know her better than any of us.”

“That’s not really the point,” Snow snapped.

He frowned. “Of course it’s the point. Look at her,” he said, gesturing to Emma.

Emma shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I appreciate that you guys care. Really, I do, but I’m not really looking to have a heart-to-heart here, okay.”

“She’s heartbroken,” Charming continued, as if Emma hadn’t spoken.

“Better now than later,” Snow said and crossed her arms over her chest.

Emma dropped her head into her hands.

“If I had to choose who I think Emma should love, it wouldn’t be Regina,” Charming said, and Emma could almost hear his frown. “It’d be… I don’t know. Anyone but Regina. But I can’t choose and you can’t choose, and I think we both know how well it turns out when someone tries to choose for you. The heart wants what it wants.”

Head still down, Emma rolled her eyes.

“Are you honestly proposing that we support this?”

“I’m proposing that we support Emma, and if the person Emma wants to be with is Regina, then let’s throw them a party and welcome her to the family.”

Emma sighed. “That’s really sweet, Dad, but Regina and I aren’t together.”

When she looked up, he was giving her a pleasantly dazed smile, and she wondered if she’d ever actually called him that before. Dad.

“Your mother said she was in love with you.”

And even though Snow was still glowering, she did spare a nod of affirmation.

“Yeah, well, her powers of detection are obviously on the fritz.” Emma rolled her shoulders, but it did nothing to dispel the tension gathered there. “It’s really great that you’re trying to be supportive and that you care and want to try and help, but there’s nothing you can do. I just need a little time, okay?” She moved to stand but paused, fixing her mother with a hard look. “And this isn’t Regina’s fault. It wasn’t some evil plan or scheme to get back at you. Sometimes things just don’t work out.”

She wished she could have believed that was it, but as she climbed the stairs to her room, the determined look on Snow’s face stuck with her.

******

Mulan was out on patrol and Emma was preparing to head over to the diner to pick up lunch when she heard the distinctive clip of heels on linoleum.

“Miss Swan,” Regina said, and Emma closed her eyes because she just couldn’t deal with this right now. Snow had done something stupid or Henry had been asking questions that made Regina freak out or Ruby had told someone. Whatever it was, Emma didn’t have the willpower to deal with Regina’s wrath, not after spending the previous night crying into her pillow and trying to feel like anything other than a fool. “Perhaps you’d like to join me for lunch.”

She cracked open an eye to see Regina pulling storage containers out of the picnic basket Emma had left at her house a few nights before.

“What are you doing?” she asked, voice hoarse.

“We had shepherd’s pie.” Regina laid a still steaming dish on Emma’s desk and sat, smoothing her skirt over her lap. “I know you enjoy it.”

“What are you doing here?”

Gaze focused on the lunch she’d brought, Regina shrugged. “We missed you at dinner last night.”

Emma slumped down in her chair. She wanted to run, to get out of there and to forget the worried curve of Regina’s lips or the furrow of her brow, but having a home apparently meant having to see things through to the bitter end.

“Maybe I’ll come back sometime,” she said gently, too hurt herself to try and inflict any more of it, “but not right now. I need some time, Regina.”

Regina looked up at her, expression stark and focused, and this was what she’d come to say, Emma realized.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Miss Swan,” she said stiffly. “I didn’t want to leave you with the impression that my… issues reflect on you in any way. I’m sure your true love is out there waiting for you. You deserve any happiness you find.”

Something inside Emma snapped. “Damn it, Regina.” She pushed her chair back and stood, chest heaving as if she’d run a mile because fuck this sad-sack, repentant Regina. “You make me happy. I don’t know what you think I’m going to find, but I want you. I want you and I want Henry and I want a family, but right now, most of all, I want you.” She wrapped her fingers around the back of her chair, knuckles whitening and swallowed hard. “Why did you come here? I can’t keep doing this. I just can’t.”

Regina stood slowly, something in her eyes resolute. “I couldn’t stay away,” she said simply, embarrassment staining her cheeks. “I… I…”

The thing within Emma that had snapped a moment before broke completely at the words. “Damn it,” she said again, and met Regina half-way for a bruising kiss.

******

“We should stop,” Emma said.

Regina had pushed her back against the wall, then further, guiding her with hands and hips until they stumbled into the interrogation room, and now she had her up on the table with her legs spread so that she could fit nicely into the vee. Emma had managed half of the buttons on Regina’s shirt and took the time to pull her own hair free of the loose ponytail she’d worn to work, but mostly she’d just let herself get kissed.

Regina didn’t answer, just kissed her again, and it felt needy and real, more like a shy kiss on the back porch than a commanding one on the couch, and Emma’s head was spinning.

And then Regina’s lips were by her ear, the warmth of her breath sending shivers down Emma’s spine. “I don’t want you to find your true love,” she said fiercely, pushing Emma’s jacket off of her shoulders. “I don’t want you to find someone you deserve. I don’t want you to find someone good. I don’t want you to find someone who will make your life easy.” She nipped at the curve of Emma’s ear, leaving it stinging. “I want you.”

Emma thought about protesting – Regina might not make her life easy, but the rest of those things weren’t exactly out of her grasp – but it wasn’t really worth it when Regina’s fingers were deftly pulling apart the button on her jeans. For a moment she wondered if this was yet another swing for Regina, if she’d be back to cold and distant as soon as she’d gotten what she wanted, but Emma just didn’t have the will to push her away again.

It wasn’t easy to slide her skinny jeans over her hips and down her legs, but Regina made it seem like it was. She had Emma back on the interrogation table with her jeans around her ankles and her panties the only thing separating her ass from the cold wood before Emma could put much thought in the matter. They combined to toss her shirt across the room and moments later, Regina had her lips wrapped around one of Emma’s nipples and her fingers around the other and Emma didn’t mean to let her grasp on her magic slip, but really, she couldn’t be blamed.

She moaned and Regina melted into her, and everywhere they were connected, Emma’s skin tingled. She retained enough control to keep them from slipping into a stupor but Regina did slow, her movements becoming even more deliberate. Somehow, they tumbled onto the table top together, Regina crawling up after her, and Emma thought that maybe there was a more romantic way to go about this. Then again, she’d tried romance and all that’d brought her was tears, so if this was them, stretched out on the interrogation table at the Sheriff’s Office at noon, then so be it.

“Turn it off,” Regina said, the words crashing onto Emma like waves through the haze of her magic. “We can later, but right now, I want you to know that everything you’re feeling is because of me. I want you to know that I’m the one who is doing this to you, and to remember that the first time we were together, it was just us. No other magic needed.”

It took some effort, but Emma complied. She snapped back to complete focus just as Regina’s hand settled between her legs. She lost it again soon after, with Regina inside her and her teeth doing something to her neck that was making Emma squirm, but that was magic of a different sort altogether.

******

She pulled herself back together when Regina stood, rebuttoning the few buttons that Emma had managed to undo and straightening her cuffs.

“Wait,” Emma said, reaching out weakly, unable to summon the strength to sit up. Regina had left her a quivering mess on the table, unable to even return the favor without a moment’s rest. “Come back here.”

“I believe you’ll find your deputy has returned,” Regina said, tilting her head to indicate the other room.

Emma managed to push up on her elbows, and from there to slide off of the table. She hoisted up her pants and coerced her legs into working just in time to catch Regina before she disappeared.

“What was this?” she asked, wrapping her arms around Regina’s waist to keep her from leaving.

Regina looked away from her, jaw clenching rhythmically.

“Come on,” Emma prodded. “Give me something to work with.”

Regina sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this here.”

Ironic, Emma thought, but held her tongue. “Where do you want to talk about it?”

“Come over tonight after Henry’s asleep,” she said, and was out of Emma’s embrace and away before Emma could catch her.

******

The house looked empty. There was no reply to Emma’s knock, and she felt tension begin to rise as she tried the knob and found the door unlocked.

“Regina?” she called out, stepping into a darkened foyer. “Are you here?”

There was a sound from the hallway and a muffled, “Out back.” Emma considered drawing her gun, because Regina hadn’t mentioned anything about being harassed, but Emma knew it was happening. Maybe this was the night when taunting jumped straight into violence; she felt her heart begin to race at the prospect.

“Regina,” she called out again, racing through the house in the direction from which she’d heard the other woman’s voice. “Where are you?”

She burst out of the back doors and into the backyard, coming to a halt with her hand on her chest at the sight of the picnic blanket and the candles and Regina standing beside her tree, hands together in front of her.

“You scared me,” Emma said, holstering her service weapon and crossing the space between them to take a stunned Regina in her arms in a tight hug.

“I was trying to surprise you.”

Emma pulled back, took in the startled look on Regina’s face, and began to laugh. “I thought… I don’t know.”

“That they had finally come for me?” Regina asked, a hint of dark humor in her tone. “Not enough pitchforks and torches about for that to be the case.”

If Emma’s heart hadn’t still been racing, she would have pointed out the lack of humor in the joke. “What is this?” she asked instead, looking down at the picnic basket and blanket filled with rows of kissing bunnies. “Has this stuff been out here the whole time?”

Regina rolled her eyes. “Of course not, Miss Swan. Given recent events, I merely thought you might want to resume our date.”

Upon closer inspection, Emma noted that Regina had replicated the picnic exactly as Emma had planned it, though perhaps the food and the candles were a bit more artistically arranged.

“It’s a little too late to woo me,” she said with a half-smile, watching as the last lightning bug made its way home. “After this afternoon, especially.”

Regina shrugged self-consciously, though Emma figured the shyness in her eyes had more to do with the candles flickering in the breeze than it did with what Regina had done to her on the interrogation room table. “I’ve heard some people appreciate romance.”

Emma didn’t need a book of fairy tales to know that this – Regina, of all people, making an honest to god effort – was the stuff of happy endings. She could hold it all against her, all of the bumps in the road they’d jostled over on their way here, or she could take Regina’s hand and sink down on the blanket. She could let Regina make painful mistakes and accord her perhaps a little more patience than she deserved, and if the reward was another moment just like this one, she could count herself lucky.

“It was a pretty genius idea,” Emma said, ignoring the way Regina rolled her eyes in favor of delivering a soft, lingering kiss she was only half surprised to have returned.

It took Regina a moment to compose herself after she pulled away, which Emma took as an excellent sign. Still, her expression ran toward scowl as she said, “I believe that remains to be seen.”

Prickly to the bitter end, Emma noted, as if there was a row of checkboxes on a list entitled ‘difficult’ that Regina felt compelled to see completed. “Since the last one didn’t really get off the ground, I suppose this makes this my first official picnic,” she said, filling two tumblers with wine.

She slid a glass in Regina’s direction, but it remained untouched. “I went on several when I was younger,” Regina said, tracing the outline of a bunny with her fingertip, eyes unfocused. “They weren’t grand affairs, really. Some food stolen from the kitchen, a blanket from the stables, and a few moments away from the all-seeing eye of my mother.”

As it had the night after the aborted picnic of a few days prior, Emma’s chest tightened; this time, it was for an entirely different reason. “With Daniel?” she asked, painfully aware of her lack of knowledge on the subject. “With your true love?”

Regina’s smiled sadly. “Yes, with Daniel. He… well, I assume you’ve heard about what happened when Dr. Whale brought him to life again.”

Emma hadn’t, not really, other than a stumbling, embarrassed summation from Charming, but it didn’t seem like the time to press for details.

“When he was taken from me,” she paused, eyes hardening. “When he was murdered by my mother, I believed I had lost the capacity to feel love like that again. When he came back as the creature Whale had made of him, he urged me to love again. I thought it was foolish. How could I? No one could compare.”

The tightness in Emma’s chest made it hard to breathe.

Regina laughed softly. “He always knew best,” she said, reaching out to twine her fingers with Emma’s. “I think he would have liked you, had he gotten the chance to know you.”

Not sure whether she should be elated or in despair, Emma released the breath she’d been holding and held herself very, very still.

“Don’t look so frightened, dear.” Regina pulled Emma closer until she was situated with her back to Regina’s front, the two of them reclined against Regina’s apple tree. “That my heart had the ability to love again came as a shock to me as well.”

And not that it had been a race, but Emma was still surprised that Regina had won it.


	9. Epilogue

Snow and Regina were watching one another warily, Charming and Henry were chasing one another around the house with cans of silly string, and Emma was leaning back into the couch, a hand on her very full stomach, content. Archie’s party hat had started to list on the side of his head and Ruby was checking out Regina’s liquor cabinet, and it was maybe the best birthday party Emma had ever thrown.

“Presents,” Henry screamed, racing past with Charming hot on his heels, and Emma looked over to the little pile sitting on a table beside Regina’s fireplace.

“Yeah, Regina, come on,” Emma said, putting enough challenge in her voice to draw Regina’s attention away from Snow. “Presents.”

She caught Regina as she moved by, pulling her down on the couch and wrapping herself around her despite the way Regina stiffened. “You’ll get your real one later,” she whispered, allowing herself a kiss to the corner of Regina’s mouth. “Later, after Snow and Charming take Henry home with them for the night.” Her smile turned lecherous for a moment. “Its safe word is birthday cake. By its, I mean mine, and I’m afraid I’ve been very, very naughty Ms. Mills.”

She found Regina’s sharply indrawn breath intensely satisfying.

“And head’s up, my mom got you a juicer. She thinks they’re the best thing on earth. Charming is going to turn orange if she makes him drink any more of her carrot juice creations. Try not to mock it, please.”

Regina managed to untangle herself and stood, smiling politely at her politely waiting guests. “Come along, dear,” she said, pulling Emma up after her. “And what else did you get me? I think I see something there with your name on it.”

Emma grinned. “A first edition, signed copy of Wicked.”

Regina’s eyes narrowed. “I see you have been very naughty, Miss Swan,” she said with just enough of a growl in her voice for Emma to wonder if she should be genuinely worried. “We’ll rectify that later.”

Regina at her birthday party was a pair of designer jeans that actually looked like they’d been worn more than once. She was one of Emma’s button-down shirts, thrown on in error when Henry knocked on their door to let them know that the first guests to the party were an hour early, soft and molded to her curves as if it had been tailored for her.

Emma watched as she opened Henry’s gift, a gorgeous bracelet that he’d picked out and Emma had worked extra shifts to pay for, her smile as wide and uncomplicated as Emma had ever seen it. Everyone seemed to beam along with Henry as she snapped the clasp into place and held out her wrist for inspection for a moment before pulling him into a crushing hug, her own brilliant smile starting with Henry and ending with Emma.

At Henry’s urging, Emma joined the hug. She felt bold for a moment, with Regina smiling at her so openly and her parents looking on with approval and joy, and she closed the distance between them for a soft kiss. Henry rolled his eyes and Archie blushed, but Regina kissed her back.

At least she’d talked Snow out of getting the silver picture frame with ‘Welcome to the Family’ engraved on it, though the picture Ruby snapped of the moment would have been perfect for it.


End file.
